Florida, USA
AA-2026-967465
On the image
A man in a diamond-pattern knit shirt and pleated slacks stands on a weathered wooden dock holding up two large fish — likely tuna or amberjack — while several more lay flat on the planks at his feet, evidence of a successful day on the water. He is dressed for a backyard cookout rather than a fishing boat, which was entirely normal in the 1950s, when the postwar American male considered sport fishing a leisure activity that did not require specialized clothing. A shirtless boy and another man in a cap observe from the right, filling their supporting roles in the ritual of displaying the catch for the camera. Behind him, crushed-shell ground cover and a flat Florida landscape of palms and scrub stretch to the horizon, placing this firmly on the Gulf or Atlantic coast. The dock itself is painted the institutional blue that municipalities and fish camps used without irony throughout the decade. The man's posture — satisfied, slightly formal — belongs to an era when a photograph of you holding dead fish was a document of achievement worth keeping in the family album.
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Big Catch on the Dock, Florida, 1950s. 1950–1959. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-967465. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/big-catch-on-the-dock-florida-1950s.
@misc{aaAA2026967465,
title = {Big Catch on the Dock, Florida, 1950s},
year = {1950–1959},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-967465},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/big-catch-on-the-dock-florida-1950s}
}TY - ART TI - Big Catch on the Dock, Florida, 1950s PY - 1950–1959 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-967465 UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/big-catch-on-the-dock-florida-1950s ER -
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