@ Rising Sun*and Tankgeezer
The context for his picture is not only what you see here and now, but also the knowledge about other events during WW2. In this light there is nothing contradictinal about this photo. Nothin more or less can be misinterpreted that whould lead to principal change in the impression this picture make.
If I am wrong, then tell me what is disputable in here.
I guess we all know by now that WWII was NOT just about tankbattles, dogfights etc…
There were indeed the ‘endlösung’, ‘arbeit macht frei’, Waffen-SS misconducts etc…
But what can we do about it?
We can have endless disussions about it but what’s the point?
Should we avoid to talk about it? NO
Should we concentrate on it? NO
It’s just that there will be thousands of this kind of pictures with every one of them capable of creating very long discussions…
I for instance would appreciate it more when I see new pictures of Pz V’s then a picture of a Waffen-SS soldier beating up a prisoner.
And the Waffen-SS soldier I only take as an example…there were misconducts on every side against prisoners/POW’s
K
No am not bragging.
I just want to mention one more times that the crimes of Red Amry was te direct resault the crimes in the East ( but in much great scale). To the contrast of the Waffen-SS in Red Army nobody look at the GErmans pows as at the subhumans.
And i fully understand the Egorka’s feelings.The Nazy race superiority theories concerning East European slavs is more than simple demagogy.
They actually look at the us as at the subhumans and treat our russian pows by such way.
I do not know if there are tousands of exactly this kind of pictures. This is more or less the first one I see where you see that face to face interaction.
That is is the whole point that he is not beating him. Not at that moment anyway. If there was a execution on it it would be less impressive IMO, as it I have seen many of those. But here it is about seeing their faces like that.
It is his face. And that is all that is there - better than tousand words.
We should not concentratit on it. Not only on it. But seeing these two faces on one picture, connected by the circumstances at the same moment, can teach a lot about what happened. And it is a great visualisation to the theoretical knowledge that we have.
I for instance would appreciate it more when I see new pictures of Pz V’s then a picture of a Waffen-SS soldier beating up a prisoner.
And the Waffen-SS soldier I only take as an example…there were misconducts on every side against prisoners/POW’s
K
I see your point. But for me it is other way around. Tanks come after faces.
well, I do agree that this picture has a certain magnetism…you want to look at it again and again…;and you wonder…and you ask yourself questions…
BUT…when you say that a picture says more then a thousand words you should’ve posted the picture with only the title and without the comments.
What can be made of the following picture?
Is the apparent food tin being given to, or taken away from the Japanese prisoners?
Is it staged for the camera, like the OP one probably was, or is it just a slice of happy wartime life?
Is the Allied bloke on the left exulting in the misery being caused by taking food away from the Japs (How do we know they’re Japs?) or pleased by the care being shown them? Or maybe just chuffed that he’s in the picture?
What about the casual contempt, even hatred, for the prisoners shown by the Allied bloke on the right, who looks like he’d blow the prisoners away as soon as the photo shoot is over?
When the Camera Lies
By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, September 26, 2006; Page A21Thomas Hoepker’s photo “Brooklyn, New York, September 11, 2001” has achieved a kind of notoriety. It shows five young New Yorkers on that vividly beautiful late summer day, seemingly sunning themselves on the Brooklyn waterfront as the collapsed World Trade Center smolders in the background. The photo appears to catch the five chatting, ignoring the horror on the other side of the river. It has been interpreted as yet another example of indifference or the compulsion to return to normal even though, as anyone can see, there is nothing normal about what is happening. It is the emblematic photo of our times.
Photography, of course, is often a lie, and this photo is no exception. It captured a moment, a second or less, when one of the subjects said something and the other four turned toward him and away from the plumes of smoke, so they seemed not to care. This photo, like all photos, lacked context – what went before and what went after – and the interpretation of insouciance has been challenged by no less than some of the people in it. They insist they were intensely aware and horrified by what happened.
My bold. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/25/AR2006092500877.html
Which comments? This one: “The master… for so long… for a couple of years or so…”
That is just my vy VERY short comment. Right. Do you think by that I trick people into seeing here what is in reality not there?
sometimes you get the best discussion when you let other people start the discussion…
when you post a picture and a title people start wondering what the picture is about, why you post it etc…
let them start a discussion and wait a while…
I’m an amateur-photographer and this works
Rising Sun*, save your energy. I know what you are trying to say and I am not arguing with it.
Yes, pictures can and do lie. But we have to be smart and think, right. We just have to be critical and that is it.
Honestly, neither of 3 photos you posted here make me think anything like you suggested. Like f.ex. ignorant people and the burning towers. Anf the bloke on the right does not look like he wants to shoot japanese POWs either.
the point is that I have seen numerous times similar german photage of the RKKA POW. I know what the voice behinfd the camera whould say about them. I know what SS and Wermacht soldiers had in mind about them (I am reading curently the book “Letter from the Eastern Front”, Copenhagen, 2006 about privat letter analysis of the soldiers).
So as for me I have all the context I need. Because those people became symbols ones frosen on the photo. And it does not matter if that SS guy had in reality a tiny bit of compassion to that Kirgiz boy.
In a way you are right. I do not hide that I find this photo to be very good at showing REALITY of the interrace interraction at that time. And since I find it so good I wanted to share it.
I have seen film footage and photographs in similar fashion taken during the Battle of the Bulge with German soldiers standing next to African-American prisoners of war. A white American POW commented that the Germans had a field day comparing their features to those of the captured American blacks.
Wacht am Rhein (4 Jan 1945) video clip
http://video.aol.com/video-detail/wacht-am-rhein-4-jan-1945/3682863296
Black American POW’s compared to German soldiers - starts approx at 6:15 on video counter.
Egorka
I don’t dispute that your interpretation might well be correct.
What I dispute is that it is the only possible interpretation.
I think you’re investing the photo with your personal beliefs about what’s going on, as will many other people, but in the end it’s just a photo that tells us nothing about what the German is thinking, whereas you’re interpreting the photo as evidence of his Nazi thoughts and attitudes.
If somebody had taken a photo of Hitler grimacing in pain from one of his gastric attacks, I’m sure it could be interpreted as evidence of his crazy hatred. And probably would be if all we had to go on was the photo.
And here’s a perfect example of the caption telling a story that the photograph doesn’t, at least not to my eye, because people have invested the photo with their understanding of the background rather than what the camera has captured.
The photographer, listed as unknown but more than likely 7th Division military photographer Corporal Robert Donaldson, captured not only the total subjugation of the Japanese commander, Major General Uno, but also the barely repressed fury of an Australian commanding officer who had spent three years fighting against a savage enemy, and had recently seen many of his own men killed and wounded in the final campaign of the war – one which many at the time felt was unnecessary. Balikpapan was the last large-scale Allied operation of the war, and one of the more costly for the Australian forces. Robson’s 2/31st Battalion had suffered severely and the commander was in no mood to be charitable.
http://www.awm.gov.au/wartime/31/article.asp
See enlarged photo here http://cas.awm.gov.au/item/118033
You think I do not know that a picture can lie? Well I have seen this one:
instruction:
"If you watch the above images from your seat in front of the computer, Mr. Angry is on the left, and Mrs. Calm is on the right.
Get up from your seat, and move back 12 feet, and PRESTO - they switch places.
It is said this illusion was created by Phillippe G.Schyns and Aude Oliva of the Univ. of Glasgow.
This proves that we may not be seeing what’s actually there, all the time!"
Kato, do you think I am a “Soviet admirer”?
If yes, then how do you figure out that?
3 Pages of discussion and no flame wars. Boy this site has a come a long way, especially when you consider the topics and the posters. Maybe we should design a new UN Medal or something for getting along without flaming!
Good discussion though I have to admit.
yes indeed mr. moderator, both of us have seen other kind of dicussions…good job men…!
smack : an enthusiastic kiss 
That’s what you think, you haggis eating kilt monkey, trying to hijack this thread with your latest Pict troll. 
:mrgreen:
Wait till you see how people respond to your not so subtle troll about “when you consider the … posters”. If I was George Eller, I’d be seriously pissed off. 
And it was all going so well until you had to ruin it.
Yahhh… I feel like getting into trouble now too…
See!
I knew it would happen.
Bloody Firefly and his troll!