Ian Ference's blog on all things stereographic, from classic scopes & stereoviews to historical context & modern analysis
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.
A simple cross sits above a pile of German corpses - in a 1,000-year-old village that was completely leveled in a year, and finally came to be home to the largest military cemetery in France.
Dr. Fasser's collection came with a twine-bound set of 8 slides marked "Rheims", a common alternate spelling of Reims. But given what's on the slides, he couldn't have made them all himself - so we must examine the evidence to try to suss out whether Fasser ever did photograph Reims.
In which Wilfred Owen's poem is paired with and analyzed beside one of the images from the A. O. Fasser Collection.
