Just So You Know What I'm Talking About
Nov. 15th, 2019 09:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloThis is the "Paragon" stereo viewer, patented in 1893 by the Keystone View Company.
The image being viewed is called Happy Valley- one of a set of views of riverside scenes published by A.J. Fearnley at the Photo Works, East Boldon, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
The riverside scenes came with the viewer. They're very leafy. I flicked through them and thought, "Well, these are a bit dull." Then I slipped one in the viewer and...
...I was no longer looking at a picture but into it.
A block of vegetation resolves itself into leaves and branches- some nearer than others are. An expanse of featureless photographic paper is now air; you can almost breath it. You look through and beyond foreground and middle-ground (the old landscape painters strove for this effect and could only ever hint at it) and the furthest objects which were indistinct when flat now dazzle because you're looking into sunshine out of shadow...
I've seen 3D before of course. They have it in the movies now (where I'm not sure it belongs) but it never gets old.
And that's something else about these stereo views. They not only put you in a place, but in a time- and these leaves grew, this water ran, that boy sat on the river bank over a hundred years ago...
The image being viewed is called Happy Valley- one of a set of views of riverside scenes published by A.J. Fearnley at the Photo Works, East Boldon, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
The riverside scenes came with the viewer. They're very leafy. I flicked through them and thought, "Well, these are a bit dull." Then I slipped one in the viewer and...
...I was no longer looking at a picture but into it.
A block of vegetation resolves itself into leaves and branches- some nearer than others are. An expanse of featureless photographic paper is now air; you can almost breath it. You look through and beyond foreground and middle-ground (the old landscape painters strove for this effect and could only ever hint at it) and the furthest objects which were indistinct when flat now dazzle because you're looking into sunshine out of shadow...
I've seen 3D before of course. They have it in the movies now (where I'm not sure it belongs) but it never gets old.
And that's something else about these stereo views. They not only put you in a place, but in a time- and these leaves grew, this water ran, that boy sat on the river bank over a hundred years ago...
no subject
Date: 2019-11-15 04:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-11-15 06:24 pm (UTC)I do wonder who the people in the pictures were. I suspect a lot of them were friends and relatives- or perhaps employees- of the photographer.
no subject
Date: 2019-11-15 07:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-11-15 08:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-11-15 09:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-11-16 08:39 am (UTC)I've only seen one. My opinion is that 3D is a distraction and gets in the way of the story telling.
no subject
Date: 2019-11-16 12:40 am (UTC)Have you had any first time viewers take a peek? I'd be curious how a computer-literate child reacts to the first view of a stereograph.
no subject
Date: 2019-11-16 08:42 am (UTC)