Woman Swimming in Open Water, Rubber Bathing Cap, 1950s

Archive & AtlasEstablished · MMXXIII

Woman Swimming in Open Water, Rubber Bathing Cap, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Woman Swimming in Open Water, Rubber Bathing Cap, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-41D98F

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Somewhere in the 1950s, a woman is doing exactly what the era's health authorities, swimming instructors, and mothers all agreed a woman should do when entering any body of water: she has secured her hair inside a tight rubber bathing cap. The cap was mandatory in most public pools, strongly advised everywhere else, and universally accepted as the kind of small indignity that proved you were a serious person who respected both hygiene and your permanent wave.

She is mid-stroke in open water — a lake or reservoir, calm and deep blue — and the circular wake spreading around her records the effort more honestly than any posed poolside portrait could. The camera is above her, shot from a bank or dock, catching the self-contained completeness of a lone swimmer who has no audience in mind.

The whole scene belongs to a decade that treated recreational swimming as mild athletic virtue, something between a constitutional and a hobby, undertaken in a sensible cap and with no particular destination.

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