good morning Hank it's Tuesday I'm a
little sick sorry about my voice okay so
I've been thinking about this picture
for a little over half my life one of my
favorite books is about it I made a vlog
brothers video about it I even own a
recent print of it and so when Sara
asked if I'd be interested in making an
art assignment video about the picture
which is known as three young farmers on
their way to a dance and was taken by
the German photographer Agha sander in
1914 I said of course and started doing
some research whereupon I fell way way
down the rabbit hole one of the great
pleasures of research for me is that I
can become consumed by it like I started
out on a German language newspaper site
about who those boys actually were where
I learned that they were not in fact
farmers and then pretty soon I was on
genealogy sites and looking up military
records and Google Maps and obituaries I
just love that feeling of being lost in
a world of research like Rebecca Solnit
wrote lost really has two disparate
meanings losing things is about the
familiar falling away getting lost is
about the unfamiliar appearing and as I
learned more about the young farmers who
weren't actually farmers I got both
kinds of lost this utterly familiar
picture turned out not to be what I
thought it was and something unfamiliar
began to appear along the way I learned
about two other pictures which I
couldn't find anywhere on the Internet
and I don't think I've ever been
publicly seen one was another photograph
by saunder taken three years earlier
that showed one of the boys Otto Krieger
with his family the negative for that
photo was probably destroyed during
World War two along with 30,000 other
sadr negatives but there seemed to be a
print of it somewhere the other picture
was a postcard sent home by the boy in
the middle August Klein as he and Otto
prepared for war I mean I understand
this is not a big deal to most people
but those boys are the subject of one of
the most important photographs of the
20th century and there were more
pictures of them out there that could
give us a glimpse of their lives both
before and after the critical moment of
history that was the late spring of 1914
but despite combing through every
saunder picture ever published I
couldn't find them and then after a few
days I was at a dead end when it
occurred to me that I actually knew a
team of extremely talented cyber sleuths
in the form of two Atari a-- the
community that sprang up when
rosianna and i were running a scavenger
hunt before turtles all the way down was
published to atari a-- is very very good
at solving mysteries and so i asked them
for their help could they verify what
i'd already learned and possibly hunt
down those two other pictures indeed
they could via correspondence with the
extraordinary reporter reinhard papst we
eventually found the pictures and
secured the rights to share them here is
otto Krieger age 17 three years before
sander took the famous photograph and
also three years before Otto would go to
the front to fight in World War one and
here are Otto and August after war has
broken out you will note the distance
between their expressions in the famous
photo and this one which was only taken
a few months later I tell the whole
story or at least what I know of it in
the art assignment video which I'll link
to in the doobly-doo below but I wanted
to tell this story behind the story here
for two reasons first this whole
experience has reminded me that just
because you look at something or someone
every day doesn't mean you're seeing all
that there is to see and secondly
mysteries large and small usually don't
get solved by one person like we talk a
lot about the human capacity for
competition but I think our secret
weapon as a species is our capacity for
collaboration so thank you to Reinhard
paps and everyone at to otário for
working together to give us two more
glimpses into those young lives Hank I
hope you enjoyed the art assignment
video again the link is below I will see
you on Friday
PS we're opening up some more slots in
the life's library book club if you want
to read books with rosianna me and a
vibrant community of readers which
incidentally includes many people from
two otário you can learn more at life's
library book club comm is something I
would have tweeted but I don't have
Twitter all right I gotta go drink some
tea with honey in it