On 12 May 2009, the front page of The New York Times featured an image of three soldiers seen from behind, perched behind sandbags on a rocky lookout over a lush green valley in eastern Afghanistan. All three soldiers wear helmets and flack jackets and are gripping their rifles, looking down on an invisible attacker below. The soldier on the left, however, 19-year-old Specialist Zachary Boyd, is wearing flip-flops, a bright red T-shirt under his camouflage vest and pink boxer shorts patterned with the ‘I ♥ NY’ logo.

The Associated Press (AP) photographer David Guttenfelder shot the photograph when the US Army troop he was embedded with came under attack and Specialist Boyd leapt out of his bunk, not yet fully dressed, to man his post. In this sense, Guttenfelder’s picture delivers classic reportage: a candid, immediate view of the heat of battle. But the photograph can also be interpreted as deeply reassuring. Media reports of the image focused on the patriotic message emblazoned on the soldier’s boxer shorts, while Defense Secretary Robert Gates publicly praised Boyd’s bravery, declaring: ‘I can only wonder about the impact on the Taliban.’ The photo instantly sparked a Google trend for ‘pink boxers’, and Guttenfelder was subsequently awarded second place in the ‘people in the news singles’ category in last year’s World Press Photo competition.

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That is not what strikes me about this photo. What strikes me about this photo is that they look like little boys playing hide and seek with guns.