Giving water to a wounded pal beside a Hun blockhouse shattered in our advance at Hooge, Ypres 1914 - 1918

This steroscopic image was made by Realistic Travels, of soldiers in the field. It’s printed in stark black and white. The high contrast and lack of colour might usually make it difficult to perceive nuance, but here it creates a sense of immediacy, of something caught in real time. Look at the way the light falls on the rubble of the ‘Hun blockhouse’. It’s amazing how the photograph captures the texture of the destroyed building, the scattered stones, and broken bits of wood. The photographer has managed to bring a real sense of depth, a three-dimensionality, out of two flat images, giving a haptic feel to a scene that must have been total chaos. It puts me in mind of Gerhard Richter’s blurred photo paintings – this feels like it’s on the cusp of abstraction, where representation and disintegration collide. The image resonates with both the documentary function of early photography, and the way it can be used to create art. It presents a certain perspective, but it does it so well it makes you wonder about how to see.