 |
| Image via tywkiwdbi |
This photograph clearly illustrates the feelings of emasculation felt by
many soldiers of World War One, as the encroachment of women into
traditional male territory quite literally meant that they were no
longer 'wearing the trousers' (Hosentragend). The expression on
the soldier's face is a mixture of pride and bemusement; something
experienced often by troops at the front line as they attempted to come
to terms with their role as defenders but also as killers. His pose is
carefully arranged, either by himself or the photographer, with bayonet
pointing down to pristine black jackboots, most likely in a conscious
foreshadowment of the street violence and extreme politics in which many
of their comrades were to be embroiled post-1918. The cat - it would be
naive to assume that it is by coincidence alone a black cat - is
a reference both to fate and to the increasingly fatalistic attitude of
the men, as the world they knew was crumbling
around them, while the photographer's decision to include the outhouse
in the background suggests a subconscious acknowledgement that the world
in which they moved at that time, similar to this analysis, was replete
with Mist.
