Ian Ference's 3D blog on all things stereographic, from classic scopes & stereoviews to historical context & modern analysis
A month-long French offensive known as the Second Battle of Verdun is the subject of this 10-slide series put out by the SDV division of LSU. Featuring scenes from the recaptured regions surrounding Esnes, the series really portrays the devastation caused by 4 million shells impacting a region localized around a few miles of space.
Bad puns aside, LSU really screwed the pooch on a 45x107mm glass plate stereoview - not only did they print the image horizontally reversed, but they managed to rotate the right-hand frame of the stereo pair by 180º. In this post, we explore the printing process that must have been employed by LSU in making an extremely goofy glass plate.
On 1 April 1915, an MoS-3 piloted by Sergeant Jean Navarre took to the skies - where it encountered a German Albatros B.II. Some sharpshooting by the observer, Lieutenant Jean Robert, brought down the biplane - leading to the capture of the craft and its occupants, and the first victory for the MS 12 Escadrille, and medals for Navarre and Robert.
Sometimes, whilst one is sorting through a newly acquired collection, a new slide or card proves just captivating - and one winds up just admiring it through their favorite stereoscope for minutes on end. This was one from my latest acquisition which had this effect on me.
"La Délivrance", the statue that was at the center of the Nantes Memorial to the War Dead, was also at the center of a lot of controversy. Placed in July of 1927, it was torn down by far-right wing vandals - not to be restored for 91 years, on the Armistice Centenary.
While touring the ruins after the Great War was rather unexceptional, this well-shot amateur set is rather bizarre in that a lone woman is pictured in most of the shots, always with a stolid expression on her face and in a very proper stance. Add in a complete lack of other people, she comes off as rather ghoulish, like a spectre haunting the rubble.
An amateur set of contemporary modern ruins photography of Reims, at and around the bombed-then-burned-out Cathedral, and probably taken well before the end of the Great War, shows 12 views from a very talented photographer, documenting the damage to a beautiful city and its centerpiece.
An amateur set containing 7 views from the Great War: 3 of an ambulance convoy leaving to pick up the wounded of Champagne, 3 of a convoy at Saint-Mesmes, and one of soldiers camped in a small village (probably the latter).
4 "digital prints" from negatives of life in the camp of the 36th Artillery Regiment stationed in Saint Airy Forest at Verdun in January 1918 show snowbound soldiers near one's shelter - as well as a peek into the shelter itself!
In the final post in the Month of Remembrance series, we take a look at a merry band of soldiers preparing to "execute" what I've decided to call a "Snowboche" - a simple end to a complex series, much like the Great War itself.