Featured Image: Russell Lee. The Blessing at Dinner on the Grounds at the All-Day Community Sing, Pie Town, New Mexico (1940). Courtesy Library of Congress. LC-USF33- 012785-M5 [P&P] Also, Dinner on the Grounds, Nell Choate Jones. Church Supper (1945) Greenville Museum of Art Greenville, SC; Edna Lewis’s The Taste of Country Cooking \ (1977); Paul […] read more

Sunbathing on the beach with champagne. Lartigue’s shadow is seen in the lower left corner. See Jacques Henri Lartigue. Chou Valton at the plage de la Garoupe, Cap d’Antibes, July 1932.  Silver Gelatin Print.     read more

Cartier-Bresson’s Alaverdi Monastery, Geprgis, (USSR) records a family having a roadside picnic while celebrating St. George’s Day. In the midground beyond them looms the Alaverdi Monastery. In the foreground, picnic food is neatly placed on a picnic blanket. read more

Brassaï’s Picnic on the Edge of the Marne is a snapshot of a group at leisure. It’s a typical picnic with mounds of food and six bottles of wine for five adults. Compare Brassaï with Henri Cartier-Bresson’s Sunday on the Banks of the Marne [Dimanche sur les bords de la Marne, France] (1938). See Brassaï [Gyula […] read more

Shahn’s Sunday School Picnic, Ponderosa Homesteads, North Carolina (1937); http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/fsa.8a17327/ For a contrast, see The Bad Seed. read more

Dakin’s photographs are a record of the family in the 1880s and early 1890s in Cherry Valley, Otsego County, New York According to Pauline Dakin Taft,the family “had a passion for picnics. There were picnics all the time at any time of day. Perhaps the lake was a favorite spot for these picnics, for there […] read more

Claude Debussy and his daughter Claude-Emma (about ten years old) sit on a picnic carpet spread on the grass in a park. They are not dressed casually: he wears a summer suit, striped, white shirt with cufflinks, and a bow tie. He stares at wearing a summer dress, white socks, and shoes. Claude-Emma looks at […] read more

Dworzak’s picnic in Grozny, Chechnya, is disconcerting. Chechen men having a picnic in a bombed-out neighborhood near Minutka Square. See Thomas Dworzak. Picic in the Ruins of Chechnya (2002). Magnum Photos.   read more

Vogue Magazine staged an Edith Wharton picnic with photography by Annie Leibovitz and text by Colm Toibin. The picnic was photographed on the grounds of The Mount, Wharton’s home in Lennox, Massachusetts. See “The Custom of the Country: Vogue Re-creates Edith Wharton’s Artistic Arcadia. Vogue August 16, 2012 read more

According to family lore, Llewelyn photographed his wife Emma each year on her birthday, September 23, 1855. From a picnic point of view, it’s fortuitous because, to my knowledge, this is the first photograph ever of a picnic. *Llewelyn was a pioneer photographer and inventor. This photograph of an afternoon September 1855 shows them on […] read more

Josef Stalin and his wife, , on a picnic. the picnic is undated but Nadezhda Alliluyeva, his wife foreground left, died a suicide in 1932. The other picnickers are not identified. http://www.all-art.org/Visual_History/483-1.htm read more

Goldin’s is a spoof at Mickey Mouse’s expense. “CZ and Max on the Beach, Truro, MA” is a staged picnic of CZ and Max on a picnic cloth next to Mickey Mouse’s picture on the cover of The New York Times Magazine. Goldin seems to be suggesting that such outings are “mickey mouse”—an expression that […] read more

Mann’s photograph Picnic on the Grass is a portrait of her daughter at a picnic sitting in the same pose as Victorine Meurent, the model for the nude in Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass. Jessie at 7 shows her daughter Jesse sitting on the Grass with a plate of food: a burger and potato chips. […] read more

Miller’s Picnic (1937) is a photograph lovers’s gossip. At the time, Miller seemed to think of it as just another snapshot, but it’s now among her best sellers. A less well-known photograph of the picnic by Roland Penrose, showing  Miller bare-chested, is less well-known. In the summer of 1937, Miller and Roland Penrose, her lover, […] read more

Gary Winogrand’s photograph, White Sands Monument, is a stunning view of a picnic table in the White Sands National Monument in New Mexico. The white dunes are composed of powdery gypsum. The figures have left their Chevrolet and set out a picnic lunch under the picnic awning to shelter them from the intense sun and […] read more

When Aaron Schuman asked Klein if he dreamed  in black and white, Klein shot back, “In black and white, of course.” But his photograph Tatiana + Marie Rose + Camels, Morocco, he had it both ways.  Featured Image:  William Klein. Tatiana + Marie Rose + Camels, Morocco, (Vogue), 1958.Silver Gelatin Print.  See Aaron Schuman. “An Interview […] read more

Ray-Jones’ attitude towards life was to expose its “gentle madness” and “to walk, like Alice, through a Looking-Glass, and find another kind of world with the camera.” He preferred  to photograph situations that are “ambiguous and unreal, and the juxtaposition of elements seemingly unrelated, and the people are real.” There is no better example of […] read more

Evans’s photograph of Robert Lowell and Caroline Blackwood suggests they are just another loving couple picnicking on the grass. Evans was aware of the couple’s tension but wrote to a friend, “I think they do a lot for each other, and it is a great pleasure to see.” Walker hints there was more to tell, […] read more

At first glance, it’s a group posing for a photograph, but scrutiny reveals a group of vampires actively pursuing what they do best. Then you realize that Jeff Wall’s photograph Vampires’ Picnic (1991) is political satire, an allusion to Karl Marx’s belief that capitalists live by sucking the working classes’ blood. The ostensible menu is […] read more

When Rothrock photographed this picnic party of soldiers and their wives and companions in the desert at Fort McDowell, that temperature was probably 92 degrees, give or take. The group had gone to the desert to celebrate May Day, and Rothrock accompanied them. His work wagon is in the rear, partly obscured by a saguaro […] read more

I know only this photograph by George Platt Lynes of Cecil Beaton’s set for Frederick Ashton’s ballet Picnic at Tintagel. Ashton’s story of the doomed love affair of Tristram and Isuelt begins circa 1916 and then devolves into the mythological time when Tristan falls in love with Iseult on her way to Cornwall, where she […] read more

In the aftermath of a 7.3 magnitude earthquake in Nepal, Katmandu residents camped out in the open. At a glance, Price’s photograph seems to be a picnic. It is not. It’s a small segment of the chaos of disaster on what would otherwise be a glorious day. Price’s photograph’s full-frame reveals the actual situation as […] read more

Have a motorcar, have a picnic. Featured Image: Roger-Viollet Agency. Couple Seated before a 4CV. Camargue (France) ( 1954) (File 340.2); http://www.roger-viollet.fr/agence.aspx read more

Franey, executive chef of Le Pavilion, New York’s only four-star restaurant, and Craig Claiborne, the New York Times food critic, planned an August picnic on Gardiners Island. * It was staged in August 1965 and ironically reported in a Life magazine issue featuring the Watts Riots in Los Angeles. The story headline, with photographs by […] read more

With the Nazi army retreating, Churchill picnicked in Holland on the west bank of the Rhine River with Gen. Bernard Montgomery and Field Marshall Alan Brooke in February 1945. Allied armies had already crossed the Rhine and invaded Germany, and though the area was secure, German artillery and snipers were a threat. It is unclear […] read more

Frank’s Picnic Ground-Glendale, California (1959) captures American youth and the motorcar culture circa 1955-1956. It’s direct and unmediated, serving his intention to portray Americans as they are. The couples congregate in front of their cars. Because they are wearing bathing suits and sitting on towels, they suggest they are near a pool or lake. But […] read more

Relaxed and easy. I wish I had created this photograph. Mark Klett’s Picnic on the Edge of the Rim is a Grand Canyon vista that brings the vast landscape into manageable focus. Featured Image: Picnic on the Edge of Rim, Grand Canyon (1983), Gelatin silver print from a Polaroid negative. Featured Image: Mark Klett. Chicago […] read more

Charcot, Doctor of Medicine, and polar explorer picnicked twice in Antarctica. Each time, he used the situation to divert his crew from the boredom of being ice-bound. Charcot does not mention what they ate or drank in 1904 but uncharacteristically notes the episode is a picnic instead of pique-nique. Afterall, it wasn’t a déjeuner sur […] read more

Succumbing to ethnic paranoia and anger, the United States Congress authorized President Franklin Roosevelt to intern Japanese Americans whether they were U.S. citizens or not. The law was signed in February. In May 1942, Lee documented some of the “evacuations” in a series of photographs in California, San Benito County, California. Japanese American Girls Prepare […] read more

Lee’s photograph of The Blessing at Dinner on the Grounds at the All-Day Community Sing, Pie Town, New Mexico (1940) records a community’s religious and social life at the behest of the Farm Services Bureau. See Lee’s collection of photographs of the Dinner on the Grounds in Pie Town in June 1940. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/related/?&pk=fsa1998001291/PP&st=gallery&sb=call_number#focus; Nell Choate […] read more