Existing comment:
No Man's Land, from the series History
2014 archival pigment print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Donald Standford Rosenfeld Jr.
2017.41.25
The term "no man's land" refers to the space between the trenches of opposing armies. During World War I, it was a place of death and desolation where millions of combatants lost their lives. The photograph illustrates one figure carrying another across a landscape strewn with barbed wire and debris. Levinthal's scene is a poignant reminder of the men and myths that died amid these wastelands. The unprecedented carnage of the Great War destroyed notions of military glory and noble sacrifice long associated with war, exposing instead its brutal reality. |