AA-2026-F0CD95
On the image
Two women sit on folding chairs in a public park on a summer afternoon, their posture the settled ease of people with nowhere pressing to be. Behind them a trash receptacle stands in the middle of the grass, a design detail that made sense to someone: place the bin in plain sight, equidistant from foot traffic, and citizens will use it rather than scatter litter across the lawn. The woman on the left wears a striped swim skirt over what appears to be a bathing suit, and the one on the right wears a simple white dress with blue trim, her posture upright in the way women were taught to sit in public. In the distance, dozens of other figures dot the field — families, children, people lying on blankets — all present at once in a space that still belonged to everyone. The folding chair itself is the period's solution to leisure: portable aluminum and canvas, light enough to carry, cheap enough to own, the technology that made it possible to sit anywhere and call it a picnic. By the 1970s, the casual public park would begin its slow retreat behind liability law and municipal caution, but in the 1950s a woman could still bring a chair and a friend to an open field and assume the space was hers.
Visually related — by likeness
Women at a Public Park, 1950s. 1950–1959. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-F0CD95. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/women-at-a-public-park-1950s.
@misc{aaAA2026F0CD95,
title = {Women at a Public Park, 1950s},
year = {1950–1959},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-F0CD95},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/women-at-a-public-park-1950s}
}TY - ART TI - Women at a Public Park, 1950s PY - 1950–1959 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-F0CD95 UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/women-at-a-public-park-1950s ER -
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