Samoyed Puppies in a Birdbath, Suburban Garden, 1950s

Archive & AtlasEstablished · MMXXIII

Samoyed Puppies in a Birdbath, Suburban Garden, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Samoyed Puppies in a Birdbath, Suburban Garden, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-9DA9C0

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Someone in the 1950s owned a litter of Samoyed puppies and a birdbath, and concluded, correctly, that combining them would produce something worth photographing. The birdbath, that essential prop of the mid-century American suburban garden — concrete pedestal, shallow basin, presumably decorative since no self-respecting bird was going to land near this — had been pressed into service as a puppy platform, which is not what the manufacturer intended but is a better use. Three white puppies crowd the basin, all of them moving, none of them interested in holding still for the camera, operating on the puppy principle that the moment a lens appears is the correct moment to investigate something in the other direction. The Samoyed, a breed that looks permanently delighted with itself, was enjoying a surge of American popularity in the postwar decades, when having a large fluffy dog was one of the quieter ways of announcing that you had a yard large enough to justify it. The person who set this up believed they were documenting the puppies; what they actually documented is the very 1950s conviction that any scene, properly arranged in a garden, constituted an occasion.

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