Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, 1914

In 1914, German documentary photographer August Sander captured a famous photo titled Young Farmers, which shows three dapper men walking along the rural countryside.

Although the photo is titled “Young Farmers” — or alternatively, “Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance” — they weren’t actually farmers. Two worked in an iron ore mine and one worked in the mine’s office.

And the three men were actually on their way to two different dances. One of the dances they knew about: it was the dance in a nearby village. And the other they were heading toward unknowingly, as the photo was captured shortly before World War I erupted, and one of the three men became one of the estimated 9 million combatants who perished in the conflict.