Two Men Watching Television, 1950s

Archive & AtlasEstablished · MMXXIII

Two Men Watching Television, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Two Men Watching Television, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-72810D

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Two men sit on a living room sofa, their attention fixed on a television set positioned out of frame to the left, their posture the casual slouch of people who have decided this is how an evening gets spent. A bowl of popcorn sits on a side table, the snack of choice for a pastime that was still novel enough to require provisioning, as if television were an event rather than a utility. The furniture is sturdy and patterned in the manner of the early postwar decade—upholstered arms, wood-frame construction, the kind of investment piece a household bought once and kept. What strikes them as worthy of their undivided attention we will never know, because television had not yet learned to be urgent, and these men have not yet learned to look away.

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