Ian Ference's 3D blog on all things stereographic, from classic scopes & stereoviews to historical context & modern analysis
In this year's Remembrance post, we remember the past by looking to the future - specifically, of the Jordan/Ference Collection, the world's largest publicly available archive of Great War stereography. See over 40 new images, and consider what they meant to the men who served.
This year's Remembrance Day post focuses on the work of Cl. Gueidan, a stereographer who sold some of his non-stereo work to the Section photographique de l'armée. He had incredible access to High Command, but also focused on Marsouins (colonial marines), hospitals, and ruins, creating some incredible works in the process.
After opening this box of previously un-looked-at European glass stereoviews, I had to take into account my small Brooklyn flat and make the hard choice to deaccession them from my archive and sell them. This is never a decision I come to lightly. But limited space is limited space.
On the 101st anniversary of the Armistice, we take a look at 101 unique stereoscopic 3D photos - taken by amateurs, and not sold commercially.
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.
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.
In an attempt to start sorting through some of the piles of random amateur glass stereoviews in my collection, I picked one at random. It appears to be a family at wintertime, somewhere in Germany, in the early- or mid-1930s.
Sometimes, whilst one is sorting through a newly acquired collection, a new slide or card proves just captivating - and one winds up just admiring it through their favorite stereoscope for minutes on end. This was one from my latest acquisition which had this effect on me.
The Grotte de la Devèze in Courniou, France, known in English as the The Glass Spinner's Palace, was photographed and released by Bruguiere in the late 1940s - near the end of the era of glass-plate diapositives. I obtained a near-pristine copy the other day and thought I'd share.
While touring the ruins after the Great War was rather unexceptional, this well-shot amateur set is rather bizarre in that a lone woman is pictured in most of the shots, always with a stolid expression on her face and in a very proper stance. Add in a complete lack of other people, she comes off as rather ghoulish, like a spectre haunting the rubble.