elegant patterns / allied with deplorable wartime death

Above A sequence of magazine photographs (black-and-white originally, but cleaned-up and AI colorized here) from an issue of Popular Mechanics, Vol 31 Issue 2 (1919), published with the title Some of America’s Big Artillery Batteries on Mobile Mountings Seen at Close Range. The destruction caused by high tech guns and other killing machines will always be deplorable (as happened earlier this week in Ukraine, when a Russian rocket hit a pizzeria, killing ten civilians, including children). It is a cruel irony that these retouched World War I photographs, enlivened with camouflage patterns, are nonetheless strikingly beautiful as images.

RELATED VIDEO SERIES

Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work?

 Nature, Art, and Camouflage

 Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflage

 Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage

 Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage