[Firing Range Target for Krupp 155 mm Tank Gun, 26 shots, Krupp Steelworks, Essen]

Hand-painted lines, centered on a circle, grid and quarter square panels installed in a barren landscape. Puncture holes interfere with this formal geometry, creating seemingly random patterns; the overall effect bears more than a passing resemblance to a serial work of conceptual art recorded by a camera. Seen together with their printed captions, however, these surprising images reveal a different relationship to modernity.

The photographer, Hugo van Werden, was charged beginning in 1861 with documenting all aspects of the Krupp Steelworks in Essen Germany to furnish visual material for a sustained publicity campaign for the company’s products, notably its armaments. In 1878, he photographed the results of firing demonstrations for the Krupp 155 mm caliber tank gun and included the prints in a presentation album for the German chancellor, Otto van Bismarck. The proto-modernist photographs, each of which record the patterns and number of shots fired and the distance of the tank from the target, reveal interconnections between photography, advertising, and industrialization, particularly in the expansion of the steel industry in the late nineteenth century.