AA-2026-61D769
On the image
Somewhere in Asia in the 1950s, a Western woman in a pale raincoat has thrown her hands wide and turned to grin at the camera in front of a monumental seated Buddha, a gesture that says she has decided the correct response to encountering one of the world's great religious traditions is a shrug-and-smile. The statue towers over her by several times her height, its expression composed across centuries, hers composed across about a quarter of a second.
This was the golden age of the American abroad — a postwar world newly accessible by air, newly documented in color, and newly full of tourists who had never seen anything like this and responded by posing in front of it as though it were a large novelty roadside attraction. The raincoat, the pearl earrings, and the delighted helplessness of the gesture place her precisely in the decade: a woman of a certain comfortable American class, doing Asia on a group tour, extracting the maximum number of slides per temple.
The Buddha's expression has been serene for somewhere between five hundred and a thousand years. She has been making hers for about as long as it takes a husband to find the viewfinder.
Visually related — by likeness
American Tourist Poses Before Large Buddha Statue, Asia, 1950s. 1950–1959. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-61D769. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/american-tourist-poses-before-large-buddha-statue-asia-1950s.
@misc{aaAA202661D769,
title = {American Tourist Poses Before Large Buddha Statue, Asia, 1950s},
year = {1950–1959},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-61D769},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/american-tourist-poses-before-large-buddha-statue-asia-1950s}
}TY - ART TI - American Tourist Poses Before Large Buddha Statue, Asia, 1950s PY - 1950–1959 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-61D769 UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/american-tourist-poses-before-large-buddha-statue-asia-1950s ER -
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