Backyard Family Gathering, Suburban America, 1950s

Archive & AtlasEstablished · MMXXIII

Backyard Family Gathering, Suburban America, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Backyard Family Gathering, Suburban America, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-647C9C

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Somewhere in mid-century America, two or three young mothers have assembled every child they are collectively responsible for onto a patch of lawn under a large tree, which is the 1950s solution to the problem of children — get them outside, near shade, and hope for the best. The women are dressed in the full-skirted cotton prints of the era, the kind of dress that required ironing even on a Sunday afternoon in the yard, because the decade had strong opinions about what constituted acceptable outdoor appearance. The children range from infants being held to toddlers sitting directly on the grass doing what toddlers do, while the older boys at the right edge of the frame have already achieved the particular posture of children who have been told to stand still and are working hard at not running away. One boy's yellow Little League shirt is the single concession to informality in an otherwise Sunday-best crowd, marking him as the child who had come straight from somewhere better. The whole scene is the photographic record of a family reunion or holiday gathering that someone felt posterity absolutely needed to see, on the reasonable assumption that all these children would grow up and want to know what they looked like before they had opinions.

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