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.
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