This is going to have to be another brief post, as in an hour’s time I must make my way to the bus station – and from there, journey to my hometown of Rochester, NY. Since Rochester is often described (by me) as “a snowbound hellhole”, I decided that the following image would be an adequate offering for my Month of Remembrance post of the day:
Going up to the WHAT? Well if you pop another ‘s’ in there, you get “Hartmannswillerskopf” – a rocky spur in the Vosges mountains where a Great War memorial now stands in honor of the battle that went on there. There is a French name for the place, Vieil Armand, which is oddly not used on this obviously non-Germanic slide. During the French-initiated year-long battle, each side took turns sustaining heavy casualties to retake the peak – only to lose it again. In early January 1916, the French gave up, and each side maintained the same lines they had held in 1914 – so basically, it was the story of much of the Great War in a microcosm – but with a really long, weird name. It would be a great image if it weren’t so heavily abraded on the emulsion side; as it stands, it’s still enjoyable, especially given the stoic demeanor of the leader leading his horse – a suitable demeanor for heading to Rochester, methinks.
I was hoping to do a longer post today, on another box from the Fasser Collection, but last night I gave a talk entitled “100 Years of Remembrance” featuring a ton of stereographic imagery from the Great War, set to the poetry of Wilfred Owen – and then rushed home to explore a new acquisition I’ve been waiting for since the beginning of the month. Much to my dismay, having sorted through it, I found it not at all what was advertised, and am going to have to initiate some headache-inducing overseas returns due to gross misrepresentation. I just closely examined over 100 items, which pretty much ate up the wee hours of the morning, wrote an annoyed message to the fraudulent seller, and now I have to pack my bags.
But worry not! The scans are all on my computer (or the cloud), and I’ll be coming at you all throughout Thanksgiving weekend – so until Rochester, I bid you adieu, and say: Have a happy Thanksgiving!
Anaglyph
