Girl in Formal Gown, Living Room, 1950s

Archive & AtlasEstablished · MMXXIII

Girl in Formal Gown, Living Room, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Girl in Formal Gown, Living Room, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1953–1959

AA-2026-098B91

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A girl of about ten stands in her family's living room wearing a full-length ball gown with tulle skirt and off-the-shoulder bodice — the kind of dress that in the 1950s a mother would spend serious money on for a recital, a pageant, or a First Communion, and then photograph in front of the good furniture to prove it had been worth it. The living room has been arranged, consciously or not, as a backdrop: the tiered end table with its china figurines, the fringed armchair angled just so. She stands with her hands clasped at her waist in the posture girls were taught when someone pointed a camera at them, composed and slightly formal, performing the occasion for the record. The gown is the whole point of the afternoon, and she knows it, and she is doing her best to be worthy of it.

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