Three Girls at a Lake Shore, 1950s

Archive & AtlasEstablished · MMXXIII

Three Girls at a Lake Shore, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Three Girls at a Lake Shore, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-321CD8

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Three girls sit on a log at the edge of a northern lake, dressed in the casual summer wear of the early 1950s—printed cotton dresses and bare legs. They have arranged themselves for a photographer in the way that required no instruction: turned slightly toward the camera, hands folded, expressions composed. Behind them the water is still and clear enough to see the rocky bottom, and the shoreline is ringed with the kind of evergreen forest that marks a resort lake in Maine or Minnesota. The girl on the left has pulled her dress up slightly to show more leg, a calculation about what looks good in a photograph that would have seemed natural to her then and unremarkable to whoever was holding the camera. No one is swimming. No one appears to be about to swim. They have come to this spot, been dressed for it, and sat down to document that they were there, which is all that was required of a summer day at the lake.

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