Figure 1 – Pumpkin pies and Thanksgiving dinner at the home of Mr. Timothy Levy Crouch, a Rogerine Quaker living in Ledyard, Connecticut. Photograph by Jack Delano for the US Farm Security Administration, Nov. 1940, from the US LOC and in the public domain.

In the United States the time of Thanksgiving Weekend is rapidly drawing to a close. As a result, I have been reflecting on family, friends, and memories of Thanksgivings past. Holidays are memetic and we judge them against an archetype. This afternoon, I sought out that archetype in the the archives of the United States Library of Congress and came across the wonderful photograph of “Pumpkin pies and Thanksgiving dinner at the home of Mr. Timothy Levy Crouch, a Rogerine Quaker living in Ledyard, Connecticut.”

Jack Delano (1914-1997) worked as a photographer for the Works Progress Administration, the United Fund, and the Farm Security Administration. It has been said of Delano that his photographs ” elevate the ordinary individual to heroic status.”

This particular photograph uses the trick of image in a mirror. It is a, not so classic, foreground-background flip image. Your eye darts back and forth. Is it a photograph of the pies and cakes or is it a photograph of the family? They seem on a different plane, framed in a glowing silver, set upon a field of simple, yet sweet, flowered wallpaper. You wonder for a moment if it might not be a Norman Rockwell painting. I marvel at the complexity of angles and planes in this photograph. The image within the image is capturing a divine and personal moment in time. With our advantage of hindsight, we understand and recognize that the world was becoming engulfed in war – a war that would evaporate their way of simple American life. Yet they persist in a moment of family, and we wonder about the face of the little girl turned away from us – wonder what she looks like and wonder what became of all these people.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my readers! May you be blessed.