Snap the Whip

Nine barefoot boys play 'snap the whip' outside a one-room schoolhouse in the Catskills — a game where a line of children run holding hands, and the leader suddenly changes direction, whipping the end child off their feet. At the far end, one boy has fallen. He is the only one wearing shoes — and his smooth leather soles are what made him lose his footing on the wet ground. Barefoot meant rural, poor, unshod in summer grass. Shoes meant a family already halfway to town. The whole American mood of 1872 is in that detail: rural childhood ending, industrialisation pulling boys into New England factories, one shoe at a time. Now at Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio @butlerartmuseum