Misery

Widower, 1914 by August Sander

Of course, there are all the formal elements: the boys' matching outfits, the baldness of the three of them, that identical mouth...

But the real punctum lies in the photograph's title. If the title was, say, Banker and Sons, 1914, one could be tempted to draw Marxist conclusions (“look, even the family, the back-bone of the bourgeoisie: corrupted!”).

Or if it had been entitled Health Spa, 1914, we could thrust our collective hands into our collective pockets and feel satisfied with the contemporary state of health institutions.

Or if the photographer had been a Russian (or indeed, anonymous) we would tie the year (1914), the oriental rug, the father's waistcoat (contemporary signifier of affluence in the early 20th century) and the somber faces of the three of them into a knot that could not but suggest Victims of the Bolsheviks.

Or let us keep the title, our knowledge of the photographer's Germaness, and simply change the date to 1938. The mother, obviously a Jew, perhaps a victim of Kristallnacht, has left her family motherless. (And although it wouldn't add up chronologically or even logically, the sunken faces of the thin sons, their shaved heads and pale striped blouses, in this context, from our myopic perch in 2008 we conclude with delight: Auschwitz!)

But our eagerness to place this photograph is ultimately stifled. Our context is arguably ahistorical and personal. A man and his sons, their despair uniform in magnitude but varied in its manifestations. Father is a chump. The boys are dunces. The dead are grieving their dead, are grieving their dead, are grieving their dead.