Ian Ference's 3D blog on all things stereographic, from classic scopes & stereoviews to historical context & modern analysis
Stanley Long set out to take some stereoviews of puppets for children to enjoy. Unfortunately he went to Betty Brimmer's Puppet Theatre, which is a thoroughly grotesque and ghastly place, full of misshapen ghouls, racist caricatures, and little girls who are soon to be bear food.
An awful mood turned pleasant due to some of my VistaScreen 3D collection - most notably Eastbourne Model Village from the late 1950s.
Everybody knows that the plague is coming, everybody knows that it's coming fast... OK, that's just me ripping off Leonard Cohen during the CV-19 outbreak. But here, enjoy me taking the piss out of this homophobic holiday camp while you're holed up at home!
As the British Aristocracy fell into decline, they were forced to open the doors to their stately historic houses to the common person. Here's a look at some, from 1956 in VistaScreen 3D.
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.
Questions are a burden to others; answers a prison for oneself. So we're all going to wind up as prisoners in Portmeirion, the North Wales village designed by a mad visionary and used for the exteriors of "The Village" in ITV's 1967 sci-fi allegory "The Prisoner". Shown in VistaScreen 3D and in annotated screengrabs from the series,
Today we look at the Isle of Man, or Ellan Vannin as it's known to the speakers of its native zombie language, Manx Gaelg. A small island in the Irish Sea, this self-governing Crown dependency was the first place in the world where women could vote in national elections - and boasts the world's oldest parliamentary body. Come take a look!
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!
We've looked at some great VistaScreen, some interesting VistaScreen, and some just plain silly VistaScreen on this blog. But here, we're going to look at the absolute dregs of VistaScreen - which also happens to be one of the most popular sets the company produced during its mid-period in the late 1950s.
Douglas Adams hated Heathrow Airport. My wife likes it. Somewhere in between these points of view, there was the 1950s "London Airport", as captured here by VistaScreen. In this essay, we'll explore the nature of documentary stereography that was probably boring when shot but has become more interesting with the passage of time.