Portret van een dienstplichtige Duitse militair c. 1895 - 1910

This photograph of a German soldier was taken by A.J. Hansen. It's so small, and you can see the photographer has really gone to town trying to glam it up. What was Hansen thinking, adding all those roses? Maybe he was trying to soften the harshness of military service, or perhaps the sitter requested it to send to his sweetheart. I can imagine Hansen carefully arranging the roses around the soldier’s stiff pose, wanting to create a romantic image. I wonder if Hansen was interested in collage. The way the roses are arranged around the edge looks like what Man Ray was doing in Paris at the time. Artists are always in dialogue, borrowing and responding to each other’s ideas, smashing apart old concepts and re-arranging the pieces. Even here in this small photograph, it's like Hansen is in conversation with Man Ray, even across time and place.