Girl looking out of a wooden door onto a farmyard

Share

A young girl stands in the frame of a weathered wooden door, looking out across a farmyard where the ground is worn bare and the outbuildings sit close together. Images like this one, of a child watching the working world beyond a threshold, were a common subject in rural photography from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when farm life was still organized around daily chores and the seasons. The doorway itself is worth a look: its boards, hinges and the light falling across the step tell you as much about the household as the girl does. Pictures that frame a person between indoors and outdoors often hint at a family's routines and expectations, so the view she is studying may be as much the point as the girl herself.

More from the Barns & Farms collection

Snapshots of the Past helps heritage brands, museums, historians and storytellers tell stories with history: historic prints, image licensing and historical storytelling drawn from more than 25 years of research and curation.