AA-2026-4A8F4D
On the image
Someone owned a macro lens and a Saturday afternoon, and the result is this frilly wall of picotee petunias, photographed with the seriousness usually reserved for grandchildren. The 1960s home gardener took color slides of flowerbeds the way earlier generations took formal portraits, proof that the begonias had come in well and the neighbors ought to know it.
The petunias themselves are doing exactly what the seed catalog promised: ruffled, purple-veined blooms crowded together so densely that the foliage barely shows through. This was the era of the slide projector and the after-dinner garden show, when a roll of Kodachrome and forty captive relatives were considered a reasonable way to spend an evening.
No caption, no gardener, no address survives with the image, only the flowers, still confident that someone would want to see them again.
The historian's note
Color slide photography of domestic gardens became a widespread amateur pastime in the 1960s, driven by the affordability of 35mm cameras and Kodachrome film alongside the popularity of home slide projectors for social viewing. Petunias of the ruffled, bicolor picotee type shown here were among the most commonly bred bedding varieties of the period, prized for their vivid veining and ease of cultivation in home borders.
Such images rarely carry identifying information about location or grower, as they were typically made for personal or family record rather than documentary purposes. They nonetheless serve as a visual record of mid-century horticultural taste and the amateur photographic culture that accompanied it.
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Bedding Petunias in Close-Up, 1960s Garden Slide. 1960–1969. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-4A8F4D. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/bedding-petunias-in-close-up-1960s-garden-slide.
@misc{aaAA20264A8F4D,
title = {Bedding Petunias in Close-Up, 1960s Garden Slide},
year = {1960–1969},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-4A8F4D},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/bedding-petunias-in-close-up-1960s-garden-slide}
}TY - ART TI - Bedding Petunias in Close-Up, 1960s Garden Slide PY - 1960–1969 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-4A8F4D UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/bedding-petunias-in-close-up-1960s-garden-slide ER -
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