Shelf 4 - Stereo Photography

©opyright by James Ollinger. All rights reserved.

Contents:

Mary Bennett & Paul C. Juhl:  Iowa Stereographs

I have no desire to go to Iowa. I've been there and I probably never will. But this is one of my favorite books of stereo views. The authors collected all kinds of views of Iowa and produced them full-size, in pairs (along with a little viewer), in this wonderful book. Images are both rural and urban, interiors and exteriors, and people and places. In addition to the many views there are lots of comments, commentary and quotes. It's partly a book about Iowa, partly about stereo photography, mainly about a time gone on both sides of the lens.

I wish there were a lot more books like this one.

Pros: a great collection of stereo views, presented very well.

Cons: it's Iowa.

Mark Blum: Amphibians & Reptiles in 3-D, Beneath the Sea in 3-D, Bugs in 3-D and Galapagos in 3-D

Mark Blum is a photographer and naturalist who combined his interests in nature and stereo-photography to create these wonderful children's books. Stereo photos are three-dimensional when viewed with an appropriate viewer. In most books this would be a pair of glasses that easily get lost. These books use a better approach: the glasses are permanently mounted a foldout leaf on the front cover; the stereo pairs are printed lengthwise along the page, so that the viewer and the page opposite are parallel and at the right distance for viewing. Because the glasses are permanently bound into the cover they can't (easily) be lost, which makes the book kid-safe.

They're marketed (and shelved in libraries) as kids' books, but I think adults would like them as well. The photographs are great—Blum knows the secret of good 3-D is separation—i.e. things that are close up enough that you get a real sense of depth and separation. These critters are all close, colorful, and beautifully presented. The 3-D effect is gravy—these photos would look great as singles too.

Each pair is about the critter pictured, and presented on the facing page so you can just tilt the book up and read about whatever you happen to be look at. I don't think the writing works that well for a casual audience, especially children because of the scientific vocabulary: these varmints generally don't eat, they feed; so that the book reads a lot like those dreary nature movies we all hazily remember from junior high school.

But the photos make up for everything. And they're attractractively priced. Cover is $18.95, but I see used editions routinely priced in the $6-$10 range. If you like stereo photographs, or if you like some really cool photos of animals, or if you just like a novelty—take a look at one Mark Blum's books (he has more than I've mentioned here)—they're worth it.

Synopsis

Pros: Great photographs. 3-D photography really shines here.

Cons: That stilted "science" vocabulary and writing style that's proper but dull to read.

Robert S. Boyd: The Great War Through Keystone Stereographs

This really ought to go on the Collecting shelf, but it's about stereo photos so it's here anyway. I had hoped this would be like The Civil War in Depth, because World War I was very well documented in stereo; but no such luck. This is a reference book for collecting stereophraphs on the subject from a single company. Keystone was one of the major US vendors (along with Underwood & Underwood) of stereo views. So if you're a collector of World War I views, this would be indespensible. For me it's a curiosity but a disappointment.

Pros:: Incredible wealth of information if you're a collector.

Cons:: worthless if you're not.

Jim Crain: California in Depth

I love in the "In Depth" series (see The Civil War in Depth below), even though it appears they quit with only three. Jim Crain is a stereograph enthusiast who opens his collection of photos from California's 19th century. This was fertile ground for the photographers of the period: there was a major port city (San Francisco), "the old west," the Gold Rush, strip mining, Yosemite, Tahoe, cavalry and indians. It's the age of Stanford, Muir, Twain and Bret Harte. Photos here are presented in pairs with a very nice viewer tucked into the back cover (be sure your copy of the book has the viewer before you buy). The reproductions are great and the stereo separation works very well.

I was particuarly interested in the Sacramento flood photos from the 1860s, since I lived there and I've seen the excavations of "Old Town," which had to be raised because the floods were so devastating.

Great stuff. It's sad the book is long out of print, but the good news is you can likely get it cheap from Amazon's used book service (or equivalent). Just make sure you get the viewer.

Pros: stereo photos rarely seen anywhere else.

Cons: won't be on your bookstore shelf.

Harold Lloyd: 3-D Hollywood and Hollywood Nudes in 3-D

Many celebrities found themselves comfortable on either side of the camera—Yul Brynner, Jill St. John, Roddy McDowall, Linda McCartney, to name a few. Silent film star Harold Lloyd (most famous for hanging from a tilting clock tower by one hand in "Safety Last") was among them—using a Stereo Realist.

In the early 1950's, stereo photography enjoyed a small renaissance when the Stereo Realist came out—a 35mm format camera that easily made half-frame stereo pairs of slides that could be viewed with a hand-held viewer (rather like a Viewmaster) or projected using polarized lenses (just like in the movies). Lloyd was a serious hobbyist, and his granddaughter Suzanne Lloyd Haynes was kind enough to edit some of his images into these books.

The images in 3-D Hollywood are printed in high quality full color stereo pairs, one set per page, and a simple viewer is included— though the book can be enjoyed in 2D as well.

There are a few photos of the grounds of the magnificent Lloyd estate, "Greenacres," but most of the images are of people—friends, family and famous faces of the times. Marilyn Monroe is definitely the star of the volume—she appears many times in various outfits, including a sheer red negligee, but there are plenty of others as well: Richard Powell (sporting his own Realist), Candice Bergen (whose father Edgar, the legendary ventrilouquist, was also a stereographer), Jayne Mansfield, a very young Dorothy Provine (I miss her), Hedda Hopper, Alan Ladd (circa Shane), Howard Hughes and General Douglas MacArthur.

While many of the images are posed glamour shots (e.g. Marilyn, Dorothy and a great self-portrait of Harold himself), most of the rest are candids—images taken of guests or during Lloyd's travels. The small size of the images detract from them as fine-art, but they have that personal touch of snapshots—the kind of photo that's unposed and unrehearsed, yet the subject is very aware of the camera. But while they have that amateur's look, the sharpness, the color, the lighting and the attention to composition are a cut above, and the stereo effect is gravy.

Hollywood Nudes takes a difference tact. All of the images here are nudes, and instead of stereo pairs, the book is divided between straight color prints of single images and two-color anaglyphs which need to be viewed with the provided viewer. The images are all girls, all nudes. They're not figure studies, but mildly erotic nudes, very much like the images Playboy printed in the 1950s in content and poses. They're tasteful nudes (moreso by modern standards than in his own era), and some are excellent by any standard.

It's Hollywood, so many of the models are young actresses who either wanted the attention or supplimented their incomes by modelling on the side. Most are long forgotten by now, but a few famous names pop up. Marilyn (did anyone not photograph her in the buff) Monroe shows up, as does Bettie Page.

I was pleasantly surprised with the text, which had a sense of fun and storytelling that's missing in most collections. I never knew him, but I like to think it's the book Harold Lloyd himself would have written if he'd tried.

Synopsis

Pros: Fun if you like celebrities, Hollywood, and stereography.

Cons: Don't expect powerful drama or a revelation of character in these portraits.

The David White's Stereo Realist was the camera that started the 3-D fad of the 1950s, and it was considered among the best. This book by Morgan & Lester wrote and edited this as part of their series of books on cameras and photography (such as Graphic Graflex Photography). It's not just a glorified camera manual, it's a survey of techniques that applies to all Realist-format cameras and stereo photography in general.

Morgan & Lester got a number of stereographers to contribute to this volume, including some of the celebrities who were part of the hobby: Harold Lloyd wrote the introduction, Edger Bergan wrote the first chapter, historian Beaumont Newhall the last. Each chapter is a different subject and include "Lighting, Exposure and Color," "A Personal Approach to Technique and Composition," "Portrait and Fashion," "Stereolusions," and "Stereo in Black and White."

Synopsis

Pros: Despite its age, it's still a hell of a book on Realist-format stereo photography.

Cons: Difficult to find at a reasonable price.

Albert E. Osborne: The Stereograph and The Stereoscope

My copy is a slim hard-bound edition with no dust-jacket, so there's no scan. The book is from 1909 and I doubt it was reprinted, so good luck finding it. Some day I plan to scan it for Project Gutenberg, but right now I'm afraid of breaking the spine.

This little book was published by one of America's big stereo companies, Underwood & Underwood, as glorified sales brochure. It's cynical but I don't know how one could reach a different conclusion, because it's all about why photographs in general, and stereo views in particular, are so wonderful.

The fun part for me was seeing how it unfolded, and how the author milked it to get nearly 300 pages out of the subject. There are no plates, only a few line diagrams, no charts or tables. Instead it's a long essay that covers a huge amount of territory. Here are the chapter titles to give you a sense of it:

Introduction. Different ends for which pictures have been used. Different kinds of pictures. Stereographs and the stereoscope. Experiences of travel with stereographs. The importance of environment. The limitations of language. The wide environment the stereograph travel system gives. What are the necessities of life? Life is the purpose of our existence here. What is the life we are here to develop? Happiness vs. Pleasure. The different needs of our life. The fundamental conditions for the development of the intellect. The fundamental conditions for the development of the aesthetic nature. Fundamental conditions for the development of the moral nature. Fundamental conditions for the development of the religious life. The beautiful. The grounds of relgious belief. Differences in the quality of pleasures and the apparent conflict in life. Do good impulses always count?

Which boils down to looking at stereo views is good, wholesome, and intellectually and morally stimulating no matter what the preacher says.

Pros: Any book on stereo photography that includes "Drummond on agreement between principles of evolution and moral and religious demands" as a sub-chapter makes me smile.

Cons: Good luck finding it.

Stereo photography is nearly as old as photography itself. Charles Wheatstone explained the concept of stereoscopic vision right about the time that Daguerre began producing photographs. David Brewster created the first device for viewing stereo photographic pairs in 1849. By the time the American Civil War broke out in 1860, many photographers were making stereo pairs.

The advantage of shooting in pairs is that together you get a stereo image. But if you don't want a stereo image, you still have two perfectly good conventional images. Plus if one image was spoiled for some reason, they still had the other to sell.

Yet this is the first book of its kind—a collection of civil war photographs presented as stereo pairs, as the photographers intended (a folding viewer tucks into a pocket in the back cover). Some are by the most famous photographer of the era, Matthew Brady (or at least by his employees). There are several pairs of Lincoln, including the one that would later be used on the obverse of the penny, and the famous "last" image of Lincoln, taken just 10 weeks before his assissination. Also included are photographs of locations, equipment, men, and the aftermath of battle. And even though they're in black and white and the tonal fidelity is less than what we'd expect today (either too contrasty or too murky), some of the images are still clear enough to be disturbing.

There's also lucid text to put the images in perspective, with some comments on what the photographers had to go through to get them. And interesting captions to most of the images. The book is extremely well laid out and presented.

I would recommend this to anyone interested in the civil war era, regardless of whether they have an interest in stereo photography or not. It's that good a book.

Synopsis

Pros: Great books for civil war and history buffs, not just for stereo photo enthusiasts.

Cons: Probably won't be on your local bookstore shelf.

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