Ian Ference's blog on all things stereographic, from classic scopes & stereoviews to historical context & modern analysis
In this third and final part of a series on VistaScreen's stereoviews featuring the Bertram Mills Circus, we look at the inferior (but scarcer) "Night" version of Series 46, which replaced the "Day" version at some point in time. We also look at possible times these photos were taken, the performers who appear in them, and the problems with shooting on slow glass plates in the dark.
In the second installment (out of three) focused on the wonders of the three VistaScreen series on the Bertram Mills Circus, I document my personal journey over the course of the last couple of years to complete Series 46 - which led to my discovery of two more complete 10-card sets, and to a fascination with VistaScreen. We also delve into the reasons why there are two alternate sets with the same designation - including the theory that some rather racially unacceptable portrayals of American Indians caused the company to change from this relatively quaint "Day Series" to the more formal, and more scarce, "Night Series".
Out of love of all things circus, my very first series of images on this blog was VistaScreen C.62 "Bertram Mills Circus". This is more or less a redux of that series, revamped to greatly improve the image quality, display options, and anaglyphs, with some new information. This is the first in a series of three posts focused on 1950s VistaScreen stereography of Britain's answer to RB&BB - Bertram Mills Circus - because who doesn't love the Big Top?
Bad puns aside, LSU really screwed the pooch on a 45x107mm glass plate stereoview - not only did they print the image horizontally reversed, but they managed to rotate the right-hand frame of the stereo pair by 180º. In this post, we explore the printing process that must have been employed by LSU in making an extremely goofy glass plate.
Being delighted to receive this bizarrely-tall thin paper stereoview a few days prior, I failed at the time to realize that it was a more expensive stereo pair than any of the other 1,000+ that I had received during "Christmas in July". And it was totally worth it, because penguins are the best!
Probably the best repository for stereoscopic photography of the Exposition Internationale Paris 1937 is a book published late in the year - with stereoviews by notorious Nazi photographer Heinrich Hoffmann, and some text that just drips with propaganda. This post takes us a little further into the Exhibition, with 15 more views, and a contemplation on the nature of beautifully achieved propagandistic works.
One of the parcels which arrived on "Christmas in July" two days ago contained a wooden box - with about 500 amateur glass stereoviews contained within. Today, we take a look at two boxes at random, in an attempt to determine what this acquisition consists of, who might have taken it, and whether it is, indeed, a cohesive collection, as opposed to a random pile of amateur glass.
