AA-2026-731287
On the image
Somewhere in a postwar urban zoo, a Bactrian camel stands in a concrete pen hemmed in by heavy iron bars and a Victorian brick service building, and the whole arrangement communicates the era's working theory about wildlife display: that the animal's job was to be present, and the visitor's job was to look, and neither party needed to be comfortable. The camel's twin humps — the Bactrian's defining credential, distinguishing it from its one-humped Arabian cousin — list slightly, a sign of an animal that is not getting the exercise or diet that would keep them upright, a detail zookeepers of the 1950s did not particularly track.
The iron-bar cage style was already old-fashioned by this decade, a holdover from nineteenth-century menagerie thinking that had simply never been replaced. Progressive zoos in America and Europe were beginning to argue for moats and open-air paddocks, but the argument moved slowly and the brickwork stayed. The camel, for its part, holds its chin at the particular angle of an animal that has decided to look past everything in front of it.
A smaller camel crouches in the corner, largely ignored. The whole scene is a snapshot of the moment just before zoology's public face changed — before anyone was required to pretend the animals were thriving.
Visually related — by likeness
Bactrian Camels in Iron-Bar Enclosure, Zoo, 1950s. 1950–1959. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-731287. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/bactrian-camels-in-iron-bar-enclosure-zoo-1950s.
@misc{aaAA2026731287,
title = {Bactrian Camels in Iron-Bar Enclosure, Zoo, 1950s},
year = {1950–1959},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-731287},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/bactrian-camels-in-iron-bar-enclosure-zoo-1950s}
}TY - ART TI - Bactrian Camels in Iron-Bar Enclosure, Zoo, 1950s PY - 1950–1959 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-731287 UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/bactrian-camels-in-iron-bar-enclosure-zoo-1950s ER -
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