Christmas Portrait, Living Room, 1950s

Archive & AtlasEstablished · MMXXIII

Christmas Portrait, Living Room, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Christmas Portrait, Living Room, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1954–1959

AA-2026-81036A

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A girl of about thirteen sits in an armchair on Christmas morning, dressed in what the 1950s called a good outfit: a full harlequin-print skirt spread wide across the cushion, a white blouse with a bow at the collar, and red heels she was probably just old enough to be allowed to own. The Christmas tree beside her is loaded with icicle tinsel applied in the era's approved method — every strand draped individually by someone with more patience than would survive the decade. She is posed, and she knows it, holding the expression of a teenager who has been asked to sit still long enough to understand that the camera is not on her schedule. The whole room — the floral curtains, the brocade carpet, the armchair with fringe — is decorated with the same conviction that furnished ten thousand American living rooms in the 1950s, each one assembled as if the combination had been looked up somewhere and confirmed correct.

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