Anonimo
Affondamento della "SMS Blucher"

On January 24, 1915, a squadron of British battlecruisers faced a group of similar German units off the Dutch coast, in what will be defined as the «Dogger Bank clash». During this inconclusive battle, which saw the best of both fleets confront each other, the only victim would be an armored cruiser of the Kaiserliche Marine, the powerful 18,000-ton Blucher. The ship, not very modern but still a true technological gem, would be reached, surrounded by superior British units, and literally torn to pieces by cannon fire; its crew would be decimated, and only after hours of hell would the Blucher, torpedoed multiple times, keel over to the sky before disappearing beneath the waves.

The photograph, one of the most famous images of the war at sea, captures precisely this moment. The anonymous photographer from the light cruiser HMS Arethusa (which would sink by a mine a year later) was lucky to capture the scene with a nearly perfect quality plate. The ship is burning, its boilers have exploded, inside lie no less than 800 dead or agonizing men; those who were lucky enough to reach the ship's side and plunge into the water now try to follow the movement of the immense body rolling over itself and climb onto the hull. We see them, the men: swarming and tiny, they struggle, cling to the cannons and cables, we hear them scream and pant as the Blucher crashes into the abyss with a terrible roar. The waves crash against the hull, whose enormity is staggering; but the Blucher is no longer a ship, it is a vast tomb, a mortally wounded whale whose cannons resemble harpoons lodged in its back.

It might seem like a classic war photo, and perhaps it is. But I see something more in it. I see madness, a boundless madness that, like the hull of the Blucher, cannot fit within the confines of a photo. The madness of decades of technological race, which drove the peoples of a civilized world first to regard each other with suspicion, then to hate, and finally to slaughter each other. The Blucher and its perpetrators are the expression of an excessively grown power, which led men and governments to believe themselves more sacred and infallible than life itself, and put them in the position of having to destroy each other to feel even stronger. In photos before 1914, the German cruiser and its brothers, as well as its British opponents, paraded the seas of the world painted white, resembling fantastical castles gliding on the sea, festooned with banners, colorful frills, and golden figureheads shining in the years of the West's magnificence. In reality, they were immense unsheathed swords; the British were to remind the world that the seas belonged to the Union Jack; the Germans were to remind the Union Jack that the Reich would not remain on the lowest step of the podium for long. This dual illusion gave birth to the Blucher and the immense fleets of battleships that encircled the world's seas; this intoxication victimized all the soldiers who were shredded on the fields of Flanders, in Gallipoli, or on the Isonzo, and from tragedy to tragedy over the years leading up to us. The true victim in the photo is man. Not the German sailor, indistinct yet unmistakable form, but rather the man who believed and still believes he can destroy himself to improve, to feel like the leader of a world that, like the sea, can do without him.

It might be madness on my part too, because perhaps I see things that aren't really there, and I find myself struck by the stories of the great fleets of the twentieth century, the luminous battleships that fascinate me with a fear I cannot explain. Perhaps there is only a photo here, and not a black hole, a sinking body dragging us into the abyss. I see a sad defeat here, as well as a drama of war and immense suffering. The defeat of a man trying to stay afloat clinging to the ephemeral power he has created, and who instead sinks, into the sea of history, while the battle never ends.