Index

• Introduction
• The origins of Stereo photography
• What is Stereo Photography
• Stereo Photography in Britain
• Stereo Photography in Australia
• The Impact of the Picturesque
• A-Z List of Stereo Photographers

Intro

A Photographic Revolution

Although a pioneer in the history of photography, Gernsheim remains one of the few to highlight the important role of the stereo format in the development of photography from the 1850s to the 1880s. Most historians have tended to focus on the importance of other photographic formats which were produced in limited editions and can sit comfortably on gallery walls.

Before the early 1850s photography remained an interesting but expensive novelty Then, improvements to the negative/positive process and the easing of patent restrictions saw the development of a commercial market for outdoor photography. This interest was matched by the huge wave of popularity for stereo photographs which swept across Britain and the rest of the world after 1851. Their small size made them ideal for capturing a wider range of subjects, yet they also contained an amazing amount of detail that was magnified and turned into a three-dimensional view by a hand-held device called the stereoscope.

While stereo photographs were in great demand, the market for multiple copies of a portrait was limited compared with that of images of famous buildings or a beautiful landscape. This meant that stereos were not only the first photographs to capture many outdoor subjects, they were also the first to be mass produced for the public.

Between the Great Exhibition in London in 1851 and the Sydney International Exhibition of 1879, millions of stereo photographs were printed. Like the exhibitions held regularly throughout this period, these three-dimensional photographs were not only popular, they heralded important cultural changes in Britain and her colonies. The exhibitions collected objects from around the world and displayed them in buildings where they could educate and uplift the public. The stereo photograph played a similar role except they were not housed in huge galleries and halls but rather in small boxes in Victorian sitting rooms.

Virtual Empire: Stereo Photography in Britain and Australia 1851-1879 draws on the rich holdings of early stereos held in the Museum’s Historic Photograph Collection. Some of these photographs have previously been reproduced as half-stereos – one of the pair of images - but have not previously been exhibited or reproduced as the photographer intended.

Origins

Diagram showing a Wheatstone Stereo Viewer

1:1 Before the Stereoscope

Three-dimensional vision depends on seeing objects with both eyes simultaneously. But there are other perceptual cues which help to suggest depth. Some of these have been applied in two-dimensional art since Classical times. Among these are shading and the relative sizes of objects. Shading produces the appearance of light falling on a three-dimensional object. Diminishing size suggests increasing distance from the viewer, of a person or a tree, for example. Up to the Middle Ages these techniques were not applied with any rigour. Indeed naturalistic representations were seldom an objective of artists before the Renaissance, and relative size of figures may have had more to do with their relative importance in the story being told than any consideration of perspective.

The mathematically accurate construction of perspective scenes was a significant innovation of art in the Renaissance. This was a feature of the works of artists such as Piero della Francesca, who wrote a treatise on perspective in the fifteenth century. From the Renaissance on, perspective was applied when art was intended to be realistic.

By the eighteenth century, prints were being produced in large numbers for private collectors. Among these were perspective views, especially of townscapes, designed for viewing through the zograscope or optical diagonal machine, which was probably developed in Paris early in the eighteenth century. Viewing such prints through a mirror and lens heightened the perspectival effect but did not produce a truly three-dimensional image. This did not come until the researches of the English physicist Charles Wheatstone in the early nineteenth century.

1:2 Wheatstone Discovers Stereoscopy

Sir Charles Wheatstone (1802-1875) discovered the principal of combining two similar images to create the illusion of depth in the early 1830s. Partner in a firm of musical instrument manufacturers – he invented the concertina – and Professor of Experimental Philosophy at King’s College, London, from 1834, Wheatstone was a pioneer of the electric telegraph and the inventor of numerous scientific devices.

Wheatstone invented several types of stereoscope – a name he coined from the Greek words for ‘solid’ and ‘to look at’ – for viewing pairs of images to imitate what would be seen by each eye. He had stereoscopes made as early as 1832 but did not announce his ideas until 1838. The design of stereoscope Wheatstone favoured involved a pair of mirrors at right angles for viewing images on panels facing each other. A commercial example of such a reflecting stereoscope is illustrated here.

In 1838, the production of two similar but not identical images with any degree of complexity presented difficulties. The announcement of the photographic techniques of Daguerre and Talbot in 1839 held the promise of successful stereoscopic images. Wheatstone took an early interest in photography and encouraged several photographers to take stereo pairs of images in the early 1840s. The results were not altogether successful as photography was still in a very primitive state. Photography only developed to a state where it could be practised widely by the early 1850s, and then stereo photography became a phenomenal craze, but not with the reflecting stereoscope.

1:3 Brewster's Portable Instrument

Wheatstone’s reflecting stereoscope being large and cumbersome, Sir David Brewster (1781-1868) devised a smaller, more portable instrument using lenses – referred to as a lenticular stereoscope. Brewster was a scientific editor and writer who was also a leading experimental researcher, especially in optics. He invented an optical toy, the kaleidoscope, which was phenomenally popular in the late 1810s and has continued to be produced. He was also very prone to getting into very public disputes.

Brewster was among those who saw Wheatstone’s demonstration of the stereoscope at the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science held in Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1838. He was intrigued by the phenomenon of stereoscopy and soon obtained a reflecting stereoscope. In 1849 he proposed his own design of stereoscope consisting of a box with a pair of half lenses and an opening to insert a ‘slide’ – the pair of images mounted side by side.

Brewster was unable to find any prominent scientific instrument maker in Britain to manufacture his design and in 1850 took a prototype on a visit to Paris where he showed it to the optical instrument maker Jules Duboscq. Duboscq began manufacturing lenticular stereoscopes and also taking stereo daguerreotypes. During the Great Exhibition, Duboscq exhibited the new stereoscopes. This was the beginning of the popularity of the stereoscope in the form devised by Brewster. With improvements in photography, especially the introduction of the wet-plate process, stereo photography (and photography generally) became increasingly popular as the 1850s wore on. Over the following decades, numerous variants of the lenticular stereoscope were devised, stereoscopic cameras were invented, and stereoscopic photographs were produced by the million.

What is Stereophotography?

2:1 A Short Explanation

A stereo photograph consists of two photographs, one taken as the left eye sees a view and another slightly offset as the right eye would see the same view. These photographs are mounted on a card which is then placed into a stereoscopic viewer. The stereoscope allows the brain to superimpose the two images, imitating the three-dimensional stereovision of the human eye.

Stereo photographs are essentially the combination of two inventions of the 1830s. Sir Charles Wheatstone announced the first of these in 1838, an optical viewer using mirrors that could combine two separate images representing the slight difference in view between the left and right eyes to produce a three-dimensional effect. The second occurred in 1839 when Louis Daguerre and Henry Fox Talbot announced to the world two different photographic processes, the ‘daguerreotype’ and the ‘talbotype’ or ‘calotype’ respectively.

In the 1840s Sir Charles Wheatstone began experimenting with Talbot’s process, which enabled him to place two slightly offset photographic images in his viewer. The success of these experiments inspired a Scotsman, Sir David Brewster, to announce in 1849 his modification of the stereoscope using lenses and thus known as a lenticular stereoscope. It was Brewster’s stereoscope which defined the standard for the format and was popularised from the early 1850s.

Stereo Photography in Britain

Then, does it appear to me that in this age three things are clamorously required of Man in the miscellaneous thoroughfares of the metropolis. Firstly, that he have his boots cleaned. Secondly, that he eat a penny ice. Thirdly, that he get himself photographed. Then do I speculate, What have those seam-worn artists been who stand at the photograph doors in Greek caps, sample in hand, and mysteriously salute the public - the female public with a pressing tenderness - to come in and be 'took'? What did they do with their greasy blandishments, before the era of cheap photography?
Charles Dickens 1860

3.1 A Slow Start

Throughout the 1840s photography in Britain was constrained by Daguerre’s and Talbot’s patents, expensive chemicals and the technical limitations of both processes. The patents Talbot took out between 1841 and 1851 covered his negative/positive process, the use of certain chemicals, and even the use of photographic reproduction for publications. Unfortunately the British government showed no inclination to purchase Talbot’s patent and issue it free to the public, as had been the case with Daguerre’s patent in France.

Amateurs were given some exemptions from Talbot’s patents and vastly improved his process without claiming patent rights for their discoveries. Unfortunately for some, the pressure to give away their discoveries in the name of science had disastrous results. Frederick Scott Archer, the son of a Hereford butcher, discovered perhaps the most significant improvement to the negative/positive process in this period. This was the wet collodion negative which allowed a highly sensitive photographic emulsion to be fixed to glass. He announced it to the world free of patent in 1851. Six years later he died in poverty aged 44, leaving behind a wife and three children.

Daguerre’s process was initially more popular but it was also more expensive. Daguerreotypists in Britain and her colonies had to purchase a license and costly equipment which limited the number of photographers as well as those who could afford to buy their work. In 1855 Talbot gave up his patents and it is from this date that multiple prints, books containing photographs, and the mass production of photographs had their popular beginnings. The stereo format in particular benefited from the easing of patent restrictions and the more ready availability of cameras and photographic equipment. Many new operators took up stereo photography commercially or as a hobby.

3.2 New Technologies

Stereo photography gained significant public attention at the Great Exhibition held in London in 1851. Operators familiar with the daguerreotype process made some of the first commercial stereo photographs. But the daguerreotype’s popularity was short lived and by the end of the 1850s it had been squeezed out of business by two new photographic processes, the ambrotype and the albumen print.

The ambrotype was a collodion negative on glass backed to give it a positive appearance. Like the daguerreotype, it was a one-off process but could produce portraits more cheaply. Albumen prints were highly detailed and could be printed on paper in large numbers from collodion negatives.

By the end of the 1850s albumen prints were used almost exclusively to make stereo photographs. New publishing companies were formed to print and sell huge numbers of these albumen stereo photographs. Soon after its founding in 1854, the London Stereoscopic Company was producing more than 1,000 stereo prints per day. The Company secured a monopoly to produce stereo photographs of the 1862 London International Exhibition and sold more than 300,000 prints during the six months the Exhibition was open.

3.2 The Importance of Being Amateur

In the Victorian era many activities were carried on by amateurs in a manner that we would now describe as professional, but for which there were few if any salaried positions. Many of the important scientific discoveries of the nineteenth century were made by amateurs like Charles Darwin. These amateurs, often of independent means, pursued a wide range of interests in the arts and newly developing sciences. Their interests often covered more than one discipline and many contributed articles on a wide variety of topics to specialist clubs and societies. For instance, the amateur photographer John Dillwyn Llewellyn studied botany and astronomy, collected birds, mammals and rare plants, while also being an accomplished watercolour painter.

In photography’s formative years it was amateurs who did most of the experimenting outdoors while professionals remained in their studios. But in the 1850s a new breed of photographers adopted the subjects and styles pioneered by amateurs. Disliking this commercialising of their hobby, many amateurs abandoned photography in the 1860s, leaving future improvements to the professionals.

3.3 Open Air Photography

The stereo photographs small size effectively standardized and miniaturized many of the requirements for the positive /negative process. This miniaturization when combined with special lenses of short focal length cut exposure times down and brought to life for the first time instantaneous views of street life, and made almost all outdoor photography easier.

Portraiture continued to be the mainstay of many professional photographers, but stereo photography and its suitability for outdoor views inspired a new breed of photographers to embrace subjects outside the studio. Public demand aided this movement as the purchasers of these photographs sought out images similar to those already popularized in painting and etchings. These included still life, sculpture, architecture, genre groups, but by far the most common was the picturesque landscape view.

The period of the 1850s to the 1870s has been described as the ‘golden age’ of British photography. It produced such photographers as Roger Fenton, Robert Howlett, George Washington Wilson, Francis Bedford, Russell Sedgfield, [a_z_list.shtml#England||William England]] and lesser-known figures like Ernest Edwards, James Elliott, and Poulton & Sons, all of whom made magnificent stereo photographs during this period. By the 1860s amateur and professional stereo photographers had beautifully and comprehensively stereographed Great Britain, a remarkable achievement considering British photography’s slow start in the 1840s.

Stereo Photography in Australia

The most striking characteristics of the views are the brilliancy of the lights, the sharpness of the outlines, and the clearness of the minutest points; thus accurately displaying not only the actual objects, but also the intense transparency of the Australian atmosphere. The remoter parts of the landscape, such as the North Shore and the harbour scenery, with the ships at anchor are remarkably distinct; while the architecture of the houses in Macquarie Street is produced with almost stereoscopic effect.
Sydney Morning Herald, 1 May 1859

4.1: In A New Light

Although the bright sun and clear atmosphere of Australia should have encouraged outdoor photography, commercial photographers found it difficult to sell anything except local portraits. Throughout the 1840s people seemed unwilling to part with the pound it cost for a daguerreotype, unless it was their own or a relative’s face that was etched on to the silver.

Talbot's and Daguerre’s patent restrictions, the unreliability of chemicals and papers which had sat in a ship’s hold for three months, and the small population kept the costs of photography high and the number of photographers low. Because of this almost all known examples of Australian photography from this period are commercial portraits.

In the 1850s British interest in stereo photography, particularly outdoor views, was quickly followed in Australia. During the 1850s, cities and towns boomed and amateurs and professionals set about photographing Australian streetscapes and landscapes, often using the stereo camera so well suited to outdoor work.

Commercial stereo photographers like William Hetzer were often journalistic in their approach and catalogued buildings and streets that typified the expanding colony. Non commercial operators like Robert Hunt aligned themselves with the British amateur tradition concentrating on picturesque stereo views or items of scientific or antiquarian interest. Whatever their interests their stereo photographs remain some of the earliest views of Australian towns and the surrounding countryside

4.2 Commercial Photographers

As early as 1852 D. T. Kilburn was demonstrating stereo photography in Hobart and by 1854 Freeman Brothers were exhibiting examples of stereo daguerreotypes at their George Street studios in Sydney.

Stereo photography became an attractive alternative for commercial operators and although they continued to take portraits, some found there was a market for outdoor stereo photographs as well.

William Hetzer was one of the first to produce a series of stereographic pictures of Sydney and in 1858 he published a set of 36 views, increasing this number to 100 by December 1859. Although Hetzer stopped producing stereo views by 1863, other professionals, such as Samuel Clifford and Alexander Brodie, continued producing them in Melbourne and Tasmania as well as Sydney.

Making money from local stereo photographs remained difficult due to competition from local retailers who by the end of the 1850s were selling large numbers of stereo photographs imported from overseas. In 1859, the publisher J. R. Clarke was offering 3000 stereo views for sale and by 1860 J. Ferguson of George Street, Sydney, claimed to have 20,000 stereo views on offer.

4.3 Australian Amateurs

Throughout the 1840s a there was a small group of Australian’s who modelled their activities on those of the amateur societies in Britain, particularly in Hobart and Sydney. Yet although photography would have been a great aid in documenting their scientific and artistic interests few appear to have taken up what was sometimes referred to as the ‘Black Art’.

This changed in the 1850s as Australians followed English trends and adopted the collodion process, albumen prints and outdoor stereo photography. By 1859 lectures were being held at the Sydney Mechanics’ School of Arts to encourage people to become amateur photographers, and detailed accounts of the photographic process were published in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Australian amateurs took larger format photographs but many favoured the stereo photograph for its suitability for outdoor work and its ease of use. They photographed their families and friends, at home and on picnics, but they also produced views which reveal their scientific interests and understanding of English picturesque conventions.

In the 1860s amateur photographers in Australia appear to have followed their British counterparts and gave up stereo photography. Even professional interest in it had waned by the late 1870s.

4.4 Instantaneous Images of George St., Sydney

In the late 1850s and early 1860s William Hetzer sett up his camera to take full advantage of the straight lines and perspective of the street. Using the new collodion glass plates he also experimented with the stereo photograph’s then novel ability to capture instantaneous scenes.

About 1859 Hetzer published a photographic series titled ‘Sydney and Environs’. Two of these were views of George Street from the same viewpoint. One of these captured the hustle and bustle of George Street with people carefully placed along the length of the street talking. It even includes someone on a ladder setting up a shop awning. Yet while all these people maintained their poses the long exposure time of this image has also captured the movement of a person walking across the street. It seems someone spoiled Hetzer’s carefully constructed scene, or did they?

In the second photograph George Street is now deserted. Its lack of action and static nature (except for a slightly blurred figure in the foreground) implies Hetzer may have used this photograph to highlight the instantaneous nature of the first photograph. When we look at the first image closely we can see the street has a number of blurry areas indicating the movement of people. It seems that Hetzer deliberately captured the blurred figure moving across the street while other people maintained static poses. This amplified the sense of action.

4.5 Photographing Antiquities

Antiquarian subjects such as ancient monuments, cathedrals, graveyards, castles, and bridges were all popular subjects amongst amateur photographers in England. Their popularity was partly due to the Victorians enthusiasm for the picturesque, which fostered some of these subjects, but amateurs added subjects relevant to their scholarly interests in the sciences and Britain’s past.

Even with a marked lack of ancient buildings Australian amateurs still sought out antiquarian subjects. In Tasmania the misty atmosphere and vegetation was well suited to the English styles of photography. Samuel Clifford’s stereo views of the rock formations at Mt. Wellington and Morton Allport’s studies of tree ferns are similar to those made in Britain.

However, for the most part Australia did not lend itself to romantic nostalgia. Australia’s clear bright atmosphere allowed highly detailed photographers to be taken, rather than misty atmospheric ones. John Sharp’s photograph of the surgeon J. Smith’s bush grave seems to document the hardships of colonial life rather than to romanticise the past.

While this added to the documentary quality of photographs it also made it difficult to create the atmospheric effects popular in England. Instead of decaying abbeys and castles overrun by nature, Robert Hunt’s photograph of the neo-gothic church at Cobbity highlights its alien shimmer and isolation from the surrounding landscape.

The Impact of the Picturesque

But cautiously will taste its stores reveal ;
Its greatest art is aptly to conceal ;
To lead, with secret guile, the prying sight
To where component parts may best unite
And form one beauteous, nicely blended whole,
To charm the eye and captivate the soul.
Richard Payne Knight 1795

5.1: The Picturesque

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the picturesque dominated British artistic circles. Somewhat confusingly it was casually used to describe subjects as varied as trees, a group of mountains, a village square, a medieval ruin, or a river. This casual usage was continued to the point where the general impression of the word today is one of images possessing pleasing and interesting qualities of form and colour but not achieving the heights of beauty or art. This belies the fact that the picturesque was an important indicator of changes in European approaches to landscape.

Rather than relying on classical or religious subjects, the picturesque encouraged artists to study the details of a particular place. Artists initially selected details from different locations on their canvasses to construct the perfect view. By the beginning of the nineteenth century theorists began to argue that it was possible for a picturesque view to exist in nature that did not need its elements rearranged by the artist. This gave photographers well versed in the principles of the picturesque an opportunity to fix a perfect scene on photographic paper.

Some of the best photographers, such as Roger Fenton, Russell Sedgfield, William England and George Washington Wilson, showed immense skill in just this style of composition when constructing their stereo photographs.

5.2 Pont Aberglaslyn, Wales

William Gilpin, in his book Observations on the Mountains and Lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland, first published in 1786, identified eight discernable elements in the construction of the picturesque image: mountains, lakes, broken ground, woods, rocks, cascades, valleys and rivers. All these elements can be found in the stereo photograph of Pont Aberglaslyn, Wales. Here the mountain occupies the middle distance with only its base visible, while the line it traces with the sky is suitably irregular and its surface is tinted with foliage. Broken ground abounds in almost every shape from the ivy-covered bridge and tree-covered hills to the rapids flowing under the bridge.

The horizontal aspects of the composition are broken by irregular lines which lead the eye into the picture while the nearly horizontal lines of the man-made bridge and the end of the rapids draw attention to the centre of the composition. Vertical lines are spaced in a series of receding motifs from the foliage in the foreground to the bare trunks of the pine trees in the distance. This also enhances the stereo effect. The man on the bridge has been cleverly placed at the very centre of the composition and yet the slight offsetting of the arch of the bridge mutes his presence.

The whole composition adheres to Gilpin’s demand that ‘in every representation, truly picturesque, the shade should greatly overbalance the light’, while also conveying the best aspects of beauty contrasted with the sublime by placing the placid water of the foreground in the lap of the mountain behind it.

5.3 Willoughby Falls, New South Wales

In Australia the clarity of the light, its ancient geology and radically different vegetation and scenery were no deterrent for lovers of the picturesque who had emigrated from England. Australian stereo photographers, like those in Britain, concentrated on outdoor photography and some were remarkably successful in endeavours to create photographs in the picturesque style.

Hunt’s photograph of Willoughby Falls is a good example of Australian photographers using picturesque conventions. The cliff is seen through foliage which obscures but adds interest to its surface, as does the cascade of water. William Gilpin believed that it was in the foreground that errors become apparent and these are perhaps more easily disguised by distance. He felt the foreground had to overcome a contradiction in which force and richness were also to contain breadth and repose. To address this problem Hunt weighted the foreground with fractured stone. These richly detailed rocks add force to the composition but their solidity and size also provide a sense of repose. Picturesque interest in the foreground of compositions was helpful for stereo photographers. They found it not only helped to lead the eye into the composition but also enhanced its three-dimensional effect. In Hunt’s stereo photograph the leading lines zigzag towards the cliff and the lightness of the waterfall.

Credits & Acknowledgements

Geoff Barker, Historic Photograph Collection
Text: All text except Origins of Stereo Photography
Web Design, scanning, Swf animation

Julian Holland, Scientific Instrument Collection
Text: Origins of Stereo Photography

Virginia Buckingham:
Title graphic

Firstly we would like to thank T.K. Treadwell at the Institute for Photographic Research, U.S.A. who has provided help and support for the exhibition since first contacted in 1999.

We would also like to thank the many people who contributed their knowledge and resources to the exhibition including: Matthew Alderdice, Lara Baldvinsdottir, National Museum, Iceland, Gordon Baldwin, The Getty, Martin Barnes, Victoria & Albert Museum, Ron Blum, Marianne Czolij, Macleay Museum, Alan Davies, State Library of New South Wales, Susie Davies, Macleay Museum, Peter Emmett, Andrew Eskind, George Eastman House Telnet Archive, Mark Haworth-Booth, Victoria & Albert Museum, John Hodgson, Rylands University Library of Manchester, Ian Hoskins, Powehouse Museum, Ken Jacobson, Ian Leith, English Heritage, National Monuments Record, Gráinne MacLochlainn, National Photographic Archive, Dublin, Paul Messier, Albumen Works, Bob Moran, Precision Dynamics, Kate Pickard, Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, Dr. Larry J. Schaaf, John Sullivan, Alexander Turnbill Library, Roger Taylor, Del Zogg, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Select Bibliography