AA-2026-CFC467
On the image
Easter Sunday, or possibly a confirmation, or possibly just a Sunday when a parent decided the camera was coming out and everyone would look presentable — the 1950s produced a great many photographs of boys in sport coats on entirely unspecified occasions. The older boy sits on the edge of a low table with his hands folded, wearing the expression of someone who has been told to hold still three times already. The younger one stands beside him in a dark blazer and blue trousers, managing the slightly more cooperative look of a child who has not yet learned that composure is optional.
Behind them the fireplace mantel does what 1950s American fireplace mantels always did: it held the family's portrait of itself. A formal studio headshot of a man in a bow tie anchors the right end, the kind of photograph that announced a household took itself seriously. Ceramic figurines and a small flower arrangement fill the rest of the shelf with the careful casualness of a room arranged to suggest it always looked this way.
The brick fireplace, the paneled surround, the yellow-green wall — this is a house someone built or bought in the postwar decade and furnished with the conviction that a fireplace made it permanent. The two boys in front of it were told to sit together and smile, which is more or less what boys have been told to do in front of fireplaces since the camera was invented, and neither of them looks entirely convinced it was necessary.
Visually related — by likeness
Two Brothers in Dress Jackets, Living Room Fireplace, 1950s. 1950–1959. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-CFC467. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/two-brothers-in-dress-jackets-living-room-fireplace-1950s.
@misc{aaAA2026CFC467,
title = {Two Brothers in Dress Jackets, Living Room Fireplace, 1950s},
year = {1950–1959},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-CFC467},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/two-brothers-in-dress-jackets-living-room-fireplace-1950s}
}TY - ART TI - Two Brothers in Dress Jackets, Living Room Fireplace, 1950s PY - 1950–1959 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-CFC467 UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/two-brothers-in-dress-jackets-living-room-fireplace-1950s ER -
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