(Click on image to enlarge)
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.
I've spent too much time looking at this photo. Sometimes I think he's trying to communicate something by the placement of his hands. Sometimes I think it's just an accidentally awkward pose.
Is he trying to show us his ring? … Is it a wedding ring? — if it's so important, then where is his wife? He is unusually dressed, wearing a dark shirt with a suit and tie. But even men in mourning did not put on all black, as women sometimes did; a bereaved man customarily confined his show of mourning to a black armband, worn over a sober suit, with a white shirt and dark tie.
And I'm not sure he's trying so much to show as to hide … his right hand, or perhaps his lack thereof. Considering the ravages wrought on men's bodies by farm and factory machinery* in those days, I wonder if his right hand is just hidden in the shadow of his left, or it is gone, or mangled?
And is that oblique gaze intended to convey some emotion? … On the other hand, it wasn't a terribly unusual pose. Or maybe, just as the camera's shutter opened, our subject glanced toward his wife, who was standing off to the side and saying, "Better move your hands, honey, they look strange that way."
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*I say "men's bodies" because I have yet to read of a local accident where a woman was mangled by a farm or factory machine. It seems that the real danger to women (and also children) lay in the kitchen, and I have come across several cases involving exploding stoves or scalding water that resulted in extreme suffering, and even death, to women or children.
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