Family Beach Outing, Overcast Day, 1950s

Archive & AtlasEstablished · MMXXIII

Family Beach Outing, Overcast Day, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Family Beach Outing, Overcast Day, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-AE941C

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Sometime in the 1950s, an American family declared it beach weather and drove out anyway. The man face-down on the blanket has reached the philosophical conclusion that horizontal is horizontal regardless of clouds, and has pulled a novelty sun visor over his face — the kind of joke item sold at resort shops on the premise that vacations require props. Behind him another adult digs industriously in the sand, which is either a sandcastle project or an act of displacement anxiety that no one has named yet.

The woman on the folding chair at the right has a different relationship with the outing. She is upright, fully dressed, chin resting in her hand, watching the camera with the patient expression of someone who organized this trip, packed the wicker picnic basket, supervised the children into their matching red-and-white swimsuits, and is now waiting to find out what happens next. The two small children are doing what small children at beaches have always done — pressing their faces into the sand as though conducting a geological survey.

The 1950s family beach trip operated on the belief that togetherness was its own reward, location and weather being secondary variables. The woman in the chair appears to have formed a slightly different view.

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