Artillery Piece in the Snow

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artillerypiece-99

I came across this in front of an American Legion post in Ossining the other day. I didn’t know what it was so I sent the picture to my friend Ken who’s a former artillery officer with the Australian Army. This is what he came back with:

It’s a US 75mm Pack Howitzer…the guns were issued to airborne and mountain units of the US Army and the Marines. Foreign users included UK airborne units and Australia apparently. I think I may have seen pictures of the Aussie ones being used in New Guinea. There may have even been one in the ‘Gun Room’ in Sydney.

Just speculation on my part but the only US Mountain Division during WWII and thereafter was 10th Mountain, which is still an active Division based at Fort Drum, NY; this side of the river across from Kingston. My guess is that the Ossining Gun belonged to 10th Mountain and was gifted to the town for use as a memorial. Once weapons like that go out of service, it’s common practice at least in the UK and Oz, to ‘render them innocuous’ and gift them for such purposes. Each gun should have a unique serial number, stamped on the tube/barrel probably. If you wanted to trace the service of the Ossining Gun, including any overseas war service, you should be able to do so relatively easily, through the town, US Artillery Associations and the like.

Gabriel Harrison, A Daguerrotype Photographer

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Walt Whitman, 1854, photo attributed to Gabriel Harrison

I’m fascinated by early photography, particularly Daguerrotypes and one of these days I hope to acquire some. In my regular internet browsing I came across this article. I hadn’t heard of Gabriel Harrison before, but it seems that he was one of the more renowned photographers of his time.

Gabriel Harrison was a true character and 19th century Renaissance Man.   Wikipedia defines a Renaissance Man as, "a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas."   That was Harrison, a man who lived a life devoted to the various Arts including Daguerrean Fine Art.

via Antique and Classic Cameras.

The Antique and Classic Cameras article doesn’t provide a lot of information (although it does provide a link to a very useful article: Gabriel Harrison – The Poetic Daguerrean by Grant B. Romer )
so I looked around on the internet and came across these two pieces:

S. J. Burr, “Gabriel Harrison and the Daguerrean Art,” March 1851. Published in: Photographic Art-Journal (New York) 1:3 (March 1851): 169–77.

Gabriel Harrison: Artist

Photography in the Philippines

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Hong Kong. Elpidio Juan

Interesting article from the New York Times on photography in the Philippines. My wife is originally from the Philippines and I’m glad to read that photography is thriving. There are some nice shots, with a focus on street photography and it’s interesting that many of them were taken by expatriate filipinos living abroad.

When Rick Rocamora left his career selling pharmaceuticals to become a photographer in 1990, he was guided by the advice and encouragement of everyone from Eli Reed and Ed Kashi to Gordon Parks. He has been paying it forward ever since, serving as a mentor to a new generation of Filipino photographers, both in Manila and among his native country’s far-flung diaspora.Living in the San Francisco Bay Area, he stays in touch with them through social media, offering critiques and suggesting work to study. The result of that relationship is “Unscripted … Unpredictable,” an exhibition of street photography that opens Thursday at the Vargas Museum at the University of the Philippines.

via Photographing a Filipino View of the Streets – NYTimes.com.