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Way, Way Down the Rabbit Hole

2019-03-05 · story · John · 3:54 · watch on YouTube

Topic: History & curiosities (also: Philosophy & meaning) · mode: Personal update · tags: self promotion

Researching August Sander's photograph Young Farmers for an Art Assignment video, John falls down a rabbit hole, learns the boys were not farmers, and with Tuataria and reporter Reinhard Pabst finds two unseen pictures of Otto Krieger and August Klein; he concludes that familiar things hold more than we see and that collaboration is our species' secret weapon.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — John's history with the photograph, Sarah's Art Assignment request and the research rabbit hole

  • ★ John is a little sick and apologises for his voice; he ends by going to drink tea with honey. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ John has thought about the picture for over half his life: a favourite book of his is about it, he made a Vlogbrothers video about it, and he owns a recent print. — 00:00:00 · Vlogbrothers
  • ★★ Sarah asked John to make an Art Assignment video about the picture, Three Young Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, taken by German photographer August Sander in 1914; he agreed and began researching. — 00:00:00 · Sarah Urist Green, The Art Assignment
  • ★★ John says one of the great pleasures of research for him is being consumed by it; he loves the feeling of being lost in a world of research. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ From a German-language newspaper site John learned the boys in the photo were not in fact farmers; he went on to genealogy sites, military records, Google Maps and obituaries. — 00:00:29

00:00:58 — The two unseen pictures, Tuataria's help, Reinhard Pabst, and the found photos of Otto and August

  • ★ Invoking Rebecca Solnit on getting lost, John says he got lost both ways: the familiar picture was not what he thought, and something unfamiliar began to appear. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ John learned of two pictures apparently never publicly seen, one a Sander photo taken three years earlier of one of the boys, Otto Krieger, with his family. (hedged) — 00:00:58
  • ★★ John says the negative of that photo was probably destroyed in World War II with 30,000 other Sander negatives, though a print seemed to exist. (hedged) — 00:01:27
  • ★★ The other picture was a postcard sent home by the boy in the middle, August Klein, as he and Otto prepared for war. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ John says the boys are the subject of one of the most important photographs of the 20th century, and more pictures could show their lives before and after late spring 1914. — 00:01:27
  • ★★★ At a dead end, John asked Tuataria, the sleuthing community born of his and Rosianna's scavenger hunt before Turtles All the Way Down, to verify his findings and find the pictures. — 00:01:56 · Rosianna Halse Rojas, Turtles All the Way Down
  • ★★★ Through correspondence with reporter Reinhard Pabst, John and Tuataria found both pictures and secured the rights to share them. — 00:02:26
  • ★★ John shows Otto Krieger at 17, three years before Sander's famous photograph and three years before Otto went to the front in World War I. — 00:02:26
  • ★★ Showing Otto and August after war broke out, John notes the distance between their expressions in the famous photo and in this one, taken only a few months later. — 00:02:26

00:02:55 — Two lessons: looking is not seeing everything; mysteries are solved by collaboration

  • ★★ John tells the whole story, as far as he knows it, in the Art Assignment video linked in the doobly-doo. — 00:02:55 · The Art Assignment, doobly-doo
  • ★★★ John says the experience reminded him that looking at something or someone every day doesn't mean you're seeing all there is to see. — 00:02:55
  • ★★★ John says mysteries large and small usually aren't solved by one person: we talk about competition, but our species' secret weapon is collaboration. — 00:02:55 · collective action

00:03:24 — Thanks, the Art Assignment link, and a P.S. on new Life's Library slots

  • ★★ In a P.S. John says more slots are opening in the Life's Library Book Club, to read with him, Rosianna and a community that includes many from Tuataria; more at lifeslibrarybookclub.com. — 00:03:24 · Rosianna Halse Rojas
  • ★★ John says the Life's Library news is something he would have tweeted, but he doesn't have Twitter. — 00:03:24 · Twitter

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Otto Krieger · Tuataria · Young Farmers

Also: People: August Klein · Rebecca Solnit · Rosianna Halse Rojas · Sarah Urist Green

Projects: Life's Library · The Art Assignment

Works: Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance · Turtles All the Way Down

Organizations: Twitter

Terms: doobly-doo

Concepts: collective action

Events: World War I · World War II

Products: Google Maps

Only in the description or credits: August Sander · Reinhard Pabst

Also centred on Young Farmers: On Our Way to the Dance (Pizzamas Day 6)

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