Ian Ference's blog on all things stereographic, from classic scopes & stereoviews to historical context & modern analysis
"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.
Most people think that the casualties of War are the people killed in fighting. But many lived on, bearing scars, lost limbs, trauma; they did not receive the honors of those that fell. This post explores that notion with casualty stereoviews from A. O. Fasser, and a poem by Wilfred Owen.
