Family outing on frozen pond, 1950s

Archive & AtlasEstablished · MMXXIII

Family outing on frozen pond, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Family outing on frozen pond, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-91082F

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A man in a fedora and overcoat stands at the edge of a frozen pond with three younger family members, all dressed in heavy winter coats and hats appropriate for the season. Behind them, other figures move across the ice—some skating, some walking—in the casual, unsupervised manner of a weekend where a frozen body of water required no warning signs or liability forms. The man gazes toward the camera with the expression of someone who has been told to stand still while a relative operates the new color camera, a task he seems to tolerate without enthusiasm. Frozen ponds were public gathering places then, destinations for an afternoon that cost nothing and required only that the ice hold. By the 1970s, most would be drained or cordoned off; the assumption that ordinary people could simply walk onto a pond and stay there had become legally indefensible.

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