Visualizing Tanks

Abstract

Rapidly changing technology transformed not only military affairs in the half century before 1914 but also the printing industry. In particular, images of all kinds became available to the public on an unprecedented scale. This allowed governments to call on artists both to propagandize the war effort and record the world-historical events. In the images they created during the Great War, official war artists did much to shape the public perceptions of such novel technologies as the tank. Especially in the robust war art programs of Britain and France, artists emphasized the blank menace of machines without evidence of human agency. Images of implacable machines rearing over blasted landscapes appeared in salons, books, magazines, newspapers, and in the new medium of film. The images sank home. During the interwar period, military mechanization incorporated tanks into armored forces that projected that same menace and invincibility on a larger scale, the very characteristics that commended tank forces to totalitarian regimes.