Rooster on Ridgeline, Rural Outbuilding, 1950s

Archive & AtlasEstablished · MMXXIII

Rooster on Ridgeline, Rural Outbuilding, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Rooster on Ridgeline, Rural Outbuilding, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-AA308D

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Somewhere in rural America in the 1950s, a rooster has claimed the ridge of a weathered clapboard outbuilding as his personal broadcast tower, which is essentially what it is. The building below — unpainted grey wood, multipane windows, the kind of structure that gets called a barn, a workshop, or a chicken house depending on who's explaining it — was presumably built to keep chickens in, a function this particular rooster has renegotiated entirely in his favour. He stands at the apex of the roof with the posture of a bureaucrat who has just been given a larger office, surveying property he did not build and cannot sell. The vertical strip of red degradation running down the right side of the scene is a reminder that colour transparency materials from this era had their own opinions about permanence. The rooster, having no investment in the permanence of anything, looks indifferent to all of it.

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