Eene batterij van de beroemde 75er gereed tot schieten opgesteld. - Op het oogenblik is dit geschut het beste van al het in Europa in gebruik zijnde veldgeschut 1915

Editor: This gelatin-silver print, taken in 1915, is titled "Eene batterij van de beroemde 75er gereed tot schieten opgesteld," and the credit goes to Semaphore. I’m struck by how ordinary the scene appears, even with cannons lined up ready to fire. What's your interpretation of this piece? Curator: What immediately grabs my attention is the emphasis on production—the sheer materiality of these cannons, their manufacture and deployment amidst a pastoral landscape. Note how the technology of war, built from raw materials extracted and shaped through labor, intersects with the social and economic landscape. Editor: So, it's not necessarily about the impending battle, but about how those cannons came to be there in the first place? Curator: Exactly. The photograph prompts us to think about the network of labor that supports this weaponry. Who mined the metal? Who built the wheels? The title highlights their status as "the best" – which implicitly acknowledges industrial and colonial competition for resource exploitation, and production quality within the conflict. Does seeing it this way change how you look at the scene? Editor: Definitely. I hadn’t thought about all of the human effort it represents, the industrial machine necessary to put those cannons there. Now I see it less as a moment of readiness, and more as a culmination of countless actions. Curator: Precisely. Consider also the photographic medium itself—a product of its own industrial and chemical processes. It serves to document, but also subtly implicates itself within this network of production and consumption. We need to consider what meaning the image carries for viewers and actors at the time. What kind of social or propagandistic function may the picture play? Editor: I see it now; looking at the materials and means of production reveals a whole new dimension to the artwork’s meaning.