GERMAN SOLDIERS HAVE A ROLLICKING GOOD TIME WHILE WATCHING A DANCE. THE FEMALE-PRESENTING DANCER IS IDENTIFIED ON THE BACK AS A MALE SOLDIER WEARING A DRESS. PHOTO COURTESY OF NATIONAL W WI MUSEUM AND MEMORIAL.
WHERE YOU WANT TO BE IN DECEMBER
December
01
GO: National WWI Museum and Memorial, Wylie Gallery, 2 Memorial Drive, KCMO. $10. Through April 3, 2022.
ANOTHER ANGLE Most people tend to think of pulling a device from their pocket and snapping a quick photo as a recent phenomenon. But as Snapshots, the newest exhibit at the World War I Museum shows, it’s really not. The 1914 Vest Pocket Kodak may be smaller than most modern mobile devices, but it allowed documentation of the first World War in a new way. Snapshots was developed and designed entirely inhouse by the museum’s collections team and features over three hundred photographs. The exhibition will be at the museum until April 3. Some of the images depict the brutalities of war, like death. Those images are hidden behind a dark gray wall in the back of the gallery. Much of the exhibit, however, shows soldiers outside of the trenches and offers depictions of everyday life. In several
photographs, soldiers are playing games, swimming or dancing. Those photographs remind us that, in some ways, the young soldiers of WWI were tourists in new countries. “Imagine a young soldier from Kansas or Missouri who is traveling overseas for the first time,” says Karis Erwin, a museum spokesperson who helped assemble the show. “They’re really seeing the world in a way that they hadn’t before. They’re seeing new cultures and new religions. I love that we get to see the world as they saw it.” The exhibition, in part, juxtaposes photographs from soldiers documenting their travels with well-known, widely circulated photographs. Among them is an image of an unmasked soldier clutching his neck as his comrades continue crossing in a field behind him. It’s a staged photograph, yet it became one of the most famous images of WWI. “These photographs,” Erwin says, “transform the way we look at war.” —MARY H ENN
KANSASCITYMAG.COM DECEMBER 2021
29
