Macaw at a Florida Bird Attraction, 1950

Archive & AtlasEstablished · MMXXIII

Macaw at a Florida Bird Attraction, 1950 — Archive & Atlas

An interpretation of depth — not a measured reconstruction

Depth is precomputed and interpretive — the scene falls back to the flat image where a browser can't render it.

Macaw at a Florida Bird Attraction, 1950 — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950

AA-2026-B19A35

The Archivist

Ask about this image

Archivist

Step into the scene

Off by default. Turning it on lets the image respond to your cursor with a shallow sense of depth, rebuilt from a depth map computed when the image was catalogued. It is an interpretation for looking, not a measured 3D model — and it falls back to the flat image where the browser can't render it.

On the image

The bird had been trained to sit still for exactly as long as it took a tourist to get the camera pointed in roughly the right direction, which in 1950 was longer than most cameras needed. A macaw holds its perch in the dappled light of what was almost certainly one of Florida's roadside jungle gardens, the kind of attraction that flourished after the war by promising Northern visitors a tropical experience with a paved parking lot attached.

A young visitor in a white top tilts her head up at the bird with the particular patience of a child who has been told this is educational. Nobody in 1950 questioned why a state full of native wildlife needed to import a South American parrot to prove it was exotic, because the whole point of a vacation destination was to look more like a vacation than the place actually did on its own.

The overexposed shimmer of sunlight through the enclosure's canopy has turned the whole scene into a green blur, the film doing what family slide film of the era reliably did when pointed into bright shade. What survives is not a sharp record but an honest one: a kid, a caged bird, and a decade that thought both belonged in the same photograph.

From the community

Identifications, corrections, and discussion from readers — reviewed by a librarian before appearing here.

No notes yet — be the first to add what you know about this image.

Visually related — by likeness

Two Men Below Bok Tower, Lake Wales, Florida, 1950s

1950–1959

Forest Canopy Study, circa 1950s

1945–1965

Wild Monkey Encounter in Tropical Forest, 1950s

1950–1959

RV Park or Trailer Camp, 1950s–60s

1950–1965

Cenote or Spring-Fed Pool, Yucatan, 1960s

1960–1969

Wooded Waterside Clearing, Mid-20th Century

1945–1970

Stone Memorial with Kneeling Figure, Balkan Town Square, 1950s

1950–1959

Cenote or Subtropical Spring, Aerial View, circa 1960s-1970s

1960–1975

Man in Cap Crouching at a Shaded Park, 1950s

1950–1959

Woman in Autumn Scrubland, Outdoor Portrait, 1950s

1950–1959

Woman Sketching Outdoors, Garden Setting, 1950s

1950–1959

Backyard with Flowering Tree, circa 1950s–1960s

1950–1965