Unexpectedly our "cleaners up" come to grips with a party of Germans isolated in a captured village 1914 - 1918

This stereoscopic image, made by Realistic Travels, likely dates to the First World War era. It’s made of card stock and photographic emulsion; mass-produced, and disseminated as a form of accessible media. The image shows soldiers advancing through a blasted landscape, and there is a chilling industrial aspect to the scene, evoked by the relentless churning of the war machine. This was a time when technologies of reproduction were rapidly evolving, and photography was becoming a powerful tool for shaping public opinion. The image is captioned, "Unexpectedly our 'cleaners up' come to grips with a party of Germans isolated in a captured village," which reveals a grim and sanitized perspective of the conflict. The phrase "cleaners up" is a euphemism that obscures the brutal reality of warfare with dehumanizing language, reducing human beings to mere objects to be "cleaned up." Ultimately, this image serves as a potent reminder of the ways in which materials, making, and context intersect to shape our understanding of history and conflict. It challenges us to look beyond the surface and consider the social, political, and ethical implications embedded within the image.