Flooded Field with Dead Trees, 1950s

Archive & AtlasEstablished · MMXXIII

Flooded Field with Dead Trees, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Flooded Field with Dead Trees, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-B06834

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A winter flood has turned someone's field into a sheet of ice and standing water, the kind of disaster that in the 1950s meant a season's loss and a conversation with the insurance man, if you had one. The skeletal remains of trees protrude from the frozen surface like accusatory fingers, evidence that this wasn't just a temporary inconvenience but something that had killed vegetation and would kill whatever crop was planned for spring. The flat, featureless water stretches to a treeline that looks equally dead and distant, the whole scene rendered in the grey-green palette of a cold-weather catastrophe. A farmer standing at the edge of this mess in January would have been calculating what he could salvage and whether he'd borrowed too much already. The photograph catches the moment after the disaster is complete but before the cleanup begins, which is the moment a man realizes he has time to think about it.

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