Winter Woodland Hike, North American Backcountry, 1950s

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Winter Woodland Hike, North American Backcountry, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Winter Woodland Hike, North American Backcountry, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-1AE052

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Somewhere in a snowy North American forest in the 1950s, a woman in an orange anorak paused to smile for the camera, which was a thing people felt obligated to do even when standing in several inches of snow among bare trees with no particular destination in sight. The slide's color balance has shifted so severely toward blue that the scene looks like it was shot on the moon, which is exactly what happens when Kodachrome sits in a shoebox for seventy years and nobody tells it not to. The other figure, half-turned away, has the posture of someone who was not consulted about stopping for a photograph. Winter hiking in the postwar decade operated on the cheerful assumption that wool trousers, a hat, and goodwill toward the outdoors were sufficient equipment for any conditions, an assumption the era's casualty statistics quietly disputed. She is grinning directly at the lens with the confidence of a person who has decided the cold is not happening to her.

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