Two Girls on the Ramp, Ryan Navion, 1950s

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Two Girls on the Ramp, Ryan Navion, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Two Girls on the Ramp, Ryan Navion, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-E6C85E

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Two girls — one perhaps five, one perhaps ten — stand in their Sunday dresses on an airport ramp directly in front of a Ryan Navion, a low-wing single owned by someone who was clearly proud enough of it to bring the whole family out for a look. In the 1950s this was entirely unremarkable: general aviation was a democratic aspiration, small airports were open to the public on weekends, and standing a child beside a propeller airplane for a photograph was the kind of thing a father did instead of explaining horsepower. The Navion's tie-down chain lies coiled on the tarmac between the girls' feet, which means the plane belongs to someone here, not to the background. The older girl stands with the practiced composure of a child who has done this before; the younger one smiles because she has not yet learned that posing for photographs is supposed to be serious. Nobody thought to wonder, in that decade, whether the ramp was a place children were allowed to be — the question simply hadn't been invented yet.

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