Pipes of Peace (A pipe dream?)

Pipes of Peace (A pipe dream?)

This set from the tank museum at Bovington, Dorset was captured on Ilford FP4 film back in about 2007, but it's only since my old film scanner has been pressed back into service (new drivers for Windows 10) that I've been able to do something with the images. The gun barrels (the “pipes”) set against the roof of the exhibition spaces at the tank museum is an attempt to portray the potential for the guns of tanks (and indeed other artillery) to cause destruction. The roof structure has a regular pattern which could become much less so in the very unlikely event of shells being fired from the guns. Concentrating on the gun barrels and the roof, rather than just pictures of tanks displayed inside a clean and orderly building, seemed to be a better way to understand the destructive potential of weapons like tanks. Perhaps an exhibition of destroyed tanks and buildings would be better still. It’s probably a pipe dream that tanks could cease to exist, or at least always be kept indoors out of harm’s way as exhibits. Indeed, the features shown here could also be regarded as “pipes of peace” in terms of their defensive or deterrent capability.

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