Toddler on Suburban Sidewalk, American Residential Street, 1950s

Archive & AtlasEstablished · MMXXIII

Toddler on Suburban Sidewalk, American Residential Street, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Toddler on Suburban Sidewalk, American Residential Street, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1955–1959

AA-2026-1F07AC

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A toddler in denim shorts and white leather shoes is making his confident, slightly unsteady way down a concrete sidewalk, clutching a small yellow object with the satisfaction of someone who has recently acquired property and intends to keep it. Behind him stretches a postwar American suburb in full summer expression — the identical brick ranch houses set back on wide lawns, the late-1950s American sedans parked along the street, the whole orderly landscape that a generation of veterans built as proof that they had won something worth winning. Somebody with a camera decided this particular afternoon walk was worth preserving, which is how every family in every such neighborhood documented the early 1950s: a child, a sidewalk, the new house visible in the background as evidence of arrival. The child has no idea he is also a portrait of a moment in American domestic history, which is probably why he looks so cheerful about it.

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