Peacock on a Garden Path, 1960s

Archive & AtlasEstablished · MMXXIII

Peacock on a Garden Path, 1960s — Archive & Atlas

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Peacock on a Garden Path, 1960s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1960–1969

AA-2026-8A57D3

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The peacock has stopped in the middle of somebody's carefully mown lawn, tail dragging behind it like a bridal train nobody asked it to wear, and it is looking off toward the path with the specific indifference of a creature that has never once had to justify its own existence. Someone built this garden with a gravel walk and a log bench, the kind of civic or estate landscaping that assumed visitors would want a place to sit and admire birds that did no useful work whatsoever. The peacock did not ask for the bench and does not need it, having already been given a better ornament than any furniture the grounds crew could provide.

Someone planted geraniums at the walk's edge and someone else photographed the bird instead, which tells you which one the garden was really for. The path curves off toward another part of the grounds, the sort of leisurely, looping route that 1960s park designers favored, on the theory that visitors should never see where they were going until they got there. The peacock, unbothered by any of this design philosophy, continues on its own more direct route through the grass.

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