Young Men on a Snowy Mountain Slope, Western USA, c. 1960s

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Young Men on a Snowy Mountain Slope, Western USA, c. 1960s — Archive & Atlas

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Young Men on a Snowy Mountain Slope, Western USA, c. 1960s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1958–1968

AA-2026-6AEEB8

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Five young men have climbed to a snow line somewhere in a western American mountain range and are now sitting on a granite boulder at the tree line, doing what young men on group outings in the early 1960s did when they reached their destination: they sat down and looked at each other. One of them is wearing a tie, which tells you everything about the era — a generation that had been raised to dress for occasions had not yet fully worked out which occasions counted. The pines behind them are the kind that grow at elevation in the Sierra Nevada or San Bernardino mountains, and the untracked snow on the open slope suggests they got there early or got there first, which was probably the point. Someone thought to bring a camera, which in 1962 required a degree of forward planning that made the resulting photographs feel earned. They have the slightly formal, slightly uncertain posture of people who hiked somewhere to prove they could and are now discovering that proving it takes about four minutes.

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