Man with Capuchin Monkey, Roadside Stop, 1950s — Archive & Atlas
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Man with Capuchin Monkey, Roadside Stop, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-214B51

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Somewhere in the American South or Caribbean, a man in vacation khakis and socks-with-loafers is holding a small capuchin monkey against his shoulder with the practiced confidence of someone who has done this for approximately four seconds. In the 1950s, roadside attractions and tourist stops across the tropics and the American South kept tame monkeys as a matter of course, on the theory that a monkey you could hold was a monkey worth a quarter and a photograph. The man is smiling the smile of someone who has been told the monkey is friendly, and who has chosen to believe this because the alternative would require him to acknowledge that he is being gripped by something with thirty-two teeth and no particular loyalty to tourists. He will describe this moment for years as the time he held a monkey, omitting the part where the monkey briefly reconsidered.

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Archive & Atlas — The Archive AA-2026-214B51 · jpg · Open