AA-2026-BE5AB5
On the image
A man in a plaid shirt sits on a green sofa holding a toddler, posed for whoever is holding the camera with the composed patience of someone who has been told to hold still. This was the 1950s domestic portrait in its natural habitat: the good lamp switched on, the child aimed at the lens, the moment officially designated as a memory. Through the pass-through window cut into the wall behind him — a feature that was, in that decade, a minor triumph of open-plan thinking — a woman stands in the adjoining room with her arms folded, watching the whole production with an expression that suggests she has a different opinion of how it is going. The pass-through was designed to make the housewife feel connected to the family while she worked in the kitchen; what it also did, as this picture accidentally documents, was give her a perfectly framed view of everything she was not currently part of.
Visually related — by likeness
Father and Toddler on the Sofa, Woman Watching from the Next Room. 1952–1959. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-BE5AB5. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/father-and-toddler-on-the-sofa-woman-watching-from-the-next-room.
@misc{aaAA2026BE5AB5,
title = {Father and Toddler on the Sofa, Woman Watching from the Next Room},
year = {1952–1959},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-BE5AB5},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/father-and-toddler-on-the-sofa-woman-watching-from-the-next-room}
}TY - ART TI - Father and Toddler on the Sofa, Woman Watching from the Next Room PY - 1952–1959 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-BE5AB5 UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/father-and-toddler-on-the-sofa-woman-watching-from-the-next-room ER -
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