ABSTRACT
A beautiful woman rests in a bathtub, her gaze held by something we cannot see and in tension with that of a photograph of Hitler, staring imperiously out of a picture frame behind and to the left of her. The gaze of another nude intercuts the path of the woman’s eyes, a classical Greek statue who regards the bathing beauty, her total nakedness in contrast with the more modest pose of the woman whose arms cover her breasts so that only her naked shoulder remains visible. In front of the bathtub a pair of combat boots gives the impression that she stepped out of her military garb and straight into the water. The muddy carpet on which the boots rest indicates that U.S. and other Allied military boots may have preceded her to this spot. At fi rst glance the photograph arrests: the woman’s gaze, intent as it is, the odd juxtapositions between her newly cleansed shoulder and those muddy combat boots, the classical Greek sculpture staring at the woman and the dictator both.
