how to look at stereographs. Yes, there is a trick.
Would you like to try? I arranged Six images from the Stereoscopic View Collection from the New York Public Library Digital Collection and sequenced into a quick video so you can experience the 3D effect the photographers at the New Jersey Stereoscopic Views Company created over a century ago.
Just open this video on your cellphone device and position it inside google cardboard as instructed. Start playing the video, and make sure you are displaying it in full screen.
Look straight at the screen and slowly move the viewer towards you or away from you, until the pair of photographs on the screen blend into one three-dimensional picture. The goal is to merge the two images you see on the screen. Keep cellphone and google cardboard parallel without tipping at an angle. Relax your eyes and do not force yourself to focus. Now, just enjoy the view.
At a time when live-streaming is so common, I hope the quietness of this sequence of images will bring you back to a time when sound and images were not yet merged.
I’m honestly left with the impression that I didn’t pick these images but, that these images picked me.
One cannot ignore the prevalence of African Americans depicted in the six images selected for this project. It made me realize the context in which stereoscopic photography was invented. The imperialist period coincided with invention of photography and its early techniques. As online collections are being created, thanks to large digitization efforts within cultural institutions the responsibility to present such content within a context of place in time, becomes mandatory to prevent that which started as a preservation of stories into a perpetration of histories.
Although I didn’t have a chance to address this subject here, my interest in the social historical event of photography and the position of stereoscopic images has been ignited to the point that a paper has been written about this topic. (download PDF)