Man of the House, Living Room, 1950s — Archive & Atlas
AA-2026-FB5E5E
AA-2026-FB5E5E
On the image
A man in late middle age sits in the good armchair of a 1950s American living room, still wearing his tie on what reads as a Sunday afternoon — the era's default posture for a man photographed at home, because a man photographed at home without a tie was not yet a thing. The room is doing its job: the fringed armchair, the ceramic lamp, the small figurines on the end table are all props in the decade's shared idea of what a respectable living room looked like, assembled with considerable effort and expected to be noticed. He is not noticing any of it. He sits with his hands folded and the mild expression of a man who has been told to hold still, which in the 1950s was the entire instruction set for being photographed. The room outlasted its moment; he outlasted it too, for now.
Visually related — by likeness
Man of the House, Living Room, 1950s. 1950–1959. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-FB5E5E. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/man-of-the-house-living-room-1950s.
@misc{aaAA2026FB5E5E,
title = {Man of the House, Living Room, 1950s},
year = {1950–1959},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-FB5E5E},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/man-of-the-house-living-room-1950s}
}TY - ART TI - Man of the House, Living Room, 1950s PY - 1950–1959 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-FB5E5E UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/man-of-the-house-living-room-1950s ER -
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