AA-2026-871AA7
On the image
Someone on a long-distance train crossing the American Southwest decided that the mesa country blurring past the window was worth a photograph, which is the kind of decision that makes complete sense in the moment and produces a slightly blurred rectangle of scrubland that is indistinguishable from the previous forty miles. The postwar American passenger train was full of people documenting their journey with the same earnest conviction that the landscape owed them a dramatic composition, and the landscape, being a high desert plateau, was not especially cooperating. A lone utility pole streaks ghostlike through the middle distance, the only evidence that anyone else had ever been through here, which was the whole point the traveller was probably trying to capture. The mesa wall on the horizon — pale sandstone layered flat, the kind of geology that geologists date in millions and tourists photograph in seconds — is the sort of permanent feature that makes you feel the train is moving very fast and getting nowhere. The foreground scrub, caught in motion blur, is sagebrush doing what sagebrush has always done, which is exist in large quantities across terrain that everyone is passing through on the way to somewhere else.
Visually related — by likeness
American High Desert Through a Train Window, Likely Southwest US, Mid-20th Centu. 1950–1959. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-871AA7. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/american-high-desert-through-a-train-window-likely-southwest-us-mid-20th-centu.
@misc{aaAA2026871AA7,
title = {American High Desert Through a Train Window, Likely Southwest US, Mid-20th Centu},
year = {1950–1959},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-871AA7},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/american-high-desert-through-a-train-window-likely-southwest-us-mid-20th-centu}
}TY - ART TI - American High Desert Through a Train Window, Likely Southwest US, Mid-20th Centu PY - 1950–1959 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-871AA7 UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/american-high-desert-through-a-train-window-likely-southwest-us-mid-20th-centu ER -
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