Ian Ference's 3D blog on all things stereographic, from classic scopes & stereoviews to historical context & modern analysis
After enough requests for more pretty ladies on Brooklyn Stereography, I must assent - so here are some mediocre cheesecake stereoviews from Stanley Long. I present VistaScreen Series 40 "Glamour Models No. 2 - A bevy of British Beauties", an obvious series of outtakes from the first Glamour Models series.
With a heavy-duty post inbound this coming Sunday, let's put on our anoraks and head on down to the railyards - because it's time for a bit of trainspotting with Stanley Long and company!
No better or worse than the first two post-war Raumbild-Verlag Siegfried Brandmüller "Europa" series, this look at Holland in the 1950s pretty much gives us a cursory tour of Amsterdam, as well as an obligatory view of a windmill which looks to have been taken from a car window.
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?
In existing since the first decade after the Norman Conquest, Dudley Castle was destroyed by the Parliamentary siege during the First English Civil War. Now the grounds are a zoo - and are fully open to the public. The Levellers, Diggers, and Ranters would be proud!
The post-war Raumbild-Verlag Siegfried Brandmüller series "Greece" is primarily focused on ruins, as so many Grecian stereoviews seem to be. Still, they come alive wonderfully in this short series.
In additional to his usual fare - fancy estates, towns, zoos, and so on - VistaScreen's photographer Stanley Long dabbled in artistic figure studies. Largely unadvertised for obvious reasons - this was 1950s Britain after all - few of these sets are floating around. Here's the first in the Miss Continentale series.
VistaScreen had the opportunity to create some historically interesting stereoviews when they finally sent one of their photographers out of the United Kingdom - and down to Southern Ireland. Sadly, but predictably, they opted instead to show some rather standard (if well-taken) views of some rather standard tourist destinations in the "rebel county".