AA-2026-39DE7E
On the image
A car navigates a narrow mountain road through dense subalpine forest sometime in the postwar era, when Americans were discovering that the West was driveable and therefore worth visiting. The Kodachrome film has rendered the scene in the saturated blue-and-green palette that made color slides the proof of vacation aspiration: look, I was there, and it looked like this. A mountain peak rises in the distance, and the road ahead disappears into the forest with the kind of gentle curve that promised adventure to families in station wagons. The composition is the accidental self-portrait of a moment when the highway was still a frontier and taking photographs of it was how you proved you had been somewhere real. This is the landscape that made the American road trip a moral category, separable from mere driving because it involved trees, altitude, and the belief that seeing wilderness on film would somehow change you.
Visually related — by likeness
Mountain Pass Through Alpine Forest, Mid-20th Century Kodachrome. 1945–1965. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-39DE7E. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/mountain-pass-through-alpine-forest-mid-20th-century-kodachrome.
@misc{aaAA202639DE7E,
title = {Mountain Pass Through Alpine Forest, Mid-20th Century Kodachrome},
year = {1945–1965},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-39DE7E},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/mountain-pass-through-alpine-forest-mid-20th-century-kodachrome}
}TY - ART TI - Mountain Pass Through Alpine Forest, Mid-20th Century Kodachrome PY - 1945–1965 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-39DE7E UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/mountain-pass-through-alpine-forest-mid-20th-century-kodachrome ER -
From the community
Identifications, corrections, and discussion from readers — reviewed by a librarian before appearing here.
Sign in to add an identification, correction, or comment.
No notes yet — be the first to add what you know about this image.