Man and Two Children in Backyard, 1950s

Archive & AtlasEstablished · MMXXIII

Man and Two Children in Backyard, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Man and Two Children in Backyard, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-8AE869

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A man in his forties crouches in a grassy yard wearing a striped straw fedora and sunglasses, holding a toddler while a girl of about seven stands beside him with her arm around his shoulder. He is dressed for a casual family afternoon—white shirt, dark trousers—and the children are in simple play clothes, the girl in a blue skirt and white blouse. Behind them the yard dissolves into deep shade and overgrown brush, the kind of domestic space where a man could spend a Saturday with his children without planning, without documentation in mind, and without the sense that the moment required performance. The photograph is in color, which meant someone believed this scene was worth the expense of Kodachrome or Ektachrome film, though the scene itself suggests no occasion more formal than a weekend at home. He looks directly at the camera with an ease that suggests he was accustomed to being photographed, or at least not wary of it. What survives is an ordinary arrangement of a parent and children in a backyard that no longer exists, rendered in a color process that seemed modern then and now reads as irretrievably of its time.

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