Soldaten van het Oregon vrijwilligers regiment tijdens de Filipijns-Amerikaanse Oorlog 1899 - 1913

This stereoscopic image of soldiers of the Oregon Volunteer Regiment in the Philippines, was probably made with a glass plate camera. The monochrome palette evokes a sense of looking back, it invites you to focus on the details, the way they are waiting in the rice field, and imagine what it must have felt like to be there, waiting for orders. The realness of the photograph, the fact that it depicts actual people and events, makes it all the more poignant. Look at the clusters of rifles propped up in the ground. The texture of the earth, the bodies laying in the grass, it all feels so immediate, yet there's also a stillness, a quiet anticipation. The photograph’s composition and tonal range reminds me a little of the war paintings of Otto Dix, which are similarly full of dark foreboding and existential tension. It's a testament to the power of art to capture a moment in time. It embraces the ambiguity and multiple interpretations over fixed or definitive meanings.