JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post

This is an excellent example of appreciating images in context.  The photograph seemed line an ordinary image of a soldier peering through a periscope on action ahead of his trench, in some miserable battlefield, somewhere in Europe, 1918.  The image is the product of a photographic pool, the photographers working in semi-unison to produce acceptable images to be used in publications illustrating the war.  The images could not be too terribly graphic, and must not relate any useful military intelligence–they would pass through the hands of very active censors whose job it was to slightly inform the reading public and to also keep morale high, a difficult balancing act.

And so this is what I thought–until I turned the image over–and saw that it was stamped “Photo by Central News Photo Service”, and was accompanied by a typed caption (below), the bit of text that was to be the standardized caption for this photograph when and if it was used by a magazine or newspaper.

The title is “The Belgian Collector”. 

I was surprised to read that the Belgian collector was a sharpshooter. He would scan the field looking for any unfortunate enough to spend a moment of thoughtless to leave themselves exposed for one brief moment.  In that moment the exposed soldier could/would die, collected. 

In a  sense, “collect” like “John Fowles The Collector, only killing them with a rifle.

But that was his job. And it was war. And if he was on your side, then you’d want him there.  

“The Collector” title was chilling, and poetical.