part of the jonathan ross collection

Stereoviews

'Articles of Vertú’ by T.R.Williams

Introduction

Collecting Stereoviews

I first encountered stereo photography as a child of five or six when I came across a Holmes viewer and a set of World War I, or maybe it was Boer War views, in my mother’s old nursery, when staying with my grandparents. I didn’t find those particular views very appealing, but the experience was memorable. Later, like most children growing up in the 1950s and 60s I encountered the Viewmaster phenomenon, and red & green anaglyph 3D, and always loved that magic moment when two flat images combine to make a single three-dimensional one.

In 1976 my father passed on a copy of ‘Wonders of the Stereoscope’ by John Jones which he had been given to review. It included a stereoscope and set of reproduction cards and I thoroughly enjoyed looking at this survey of Victorian 3D photography, but afterwards put it away on a bookshelf and didn’t look at it again until the early 1990s by which time it had turned out to be a very prescient gift.

I had been immersed in holography, the ultimate in late 20th century 3D, since the late 1970s and had gradually begun to have a greater curiosity about earlier forms of three dimensional image making. A friend took me to a Photograph Collectors Fair where I was able to browse through hundreds, if not thousands, of mostly 19th century stereo views and acquire examples for as little as £1 each. It was irresistible, and has proved to be a subject of enduring fascination.

Wet plate collodion photograph of Jonathan Ross
by Kasia Wozniak

Jonathan Ross has been collecting stereoscopic photographs since the 1980s and has been posting images from his collection on Instagram for several years (@jross286).He is now digitising and cataloguing the material to make a more permanent database on this website.

Bookmark this page to see new listings as they appear, with direct links to a repository on Dropbox.

Discover an Extensive Collection of Holograms,
the ultimate 20th century successor to stereoscopy,
on the Jonathan Ross Hologram Collection website.

Image of a rectangular stereo photograph showing South Harbour,  Peterhead, Scotland

Peterhead and its Environs

Image of a rectangular stereo photograph showing St Paul's Cathedral, London in sepia tones

London

Image of a rectangular stereo photograph showing a river with tree on the e=left and man standing close to it

Thomas Ogle and Thomas Edge

Image of a rectangular stereo photograph showing beach with cliff on the right side.

Francis Bedford

Image of a rectangular stereo photograph showing Lake with houses on the right and two men in a boat

William Russell Sedgfield

Image of a rectangular stereo photograph showing three nude women posing

Nudes

Image of a rectangular stereo photograph showing Flowers in and around a vase in mainly muted red and yellow colours.

Still Life

Image of a rectangular stereo photograph showing man sitting at a tab le pulling the tablecloth

Martin Laroche

Image of a rectangular stereo photograph showing three people in a victorial room, two seatd, one standing

JAMES ELLIOTT

Image of a rectangular stereo photograph showing a horse and carriage surrounded by watching crowd

Alfred Silvester

Image of a rectangular stereo photograph showing two women and a mam in a forest scene

C. E. Goodman

James Eastlake

The Gaudin Brothers

Henri Lefort

Samuel Poulton

William England

Michael Burr

T. R. Williams

Victorian Cats

This is an ongoing project and there are more scans to come. New stereoviews will be added here.

Attributions of stereoviews without a maker’s label or blindstamp may be reconsidered as new information appears.

If you disagree with any of my attributions, please let me know why using the contact page.

Stereoviews replicate the way we see the world by taking two views of a scene, one from the right eye position and another from the left. When these are mounted together and viewed in a stereoscope, the brain merges them into a 3-dimensional or ‘stereoscopic’ image.

The technique emerged in the 1850s, soon after the invention of photography, through the work of Charles Wheatstone and Sir David Brewster, and developed into a worldwide craze with thousands of practitioners.

Stereo photography has gone out of fashion several times over the past couple of centuries, only to be rediscovered by later generations. Most of the images on this site are by European photographers working in the 1850s and 60s.

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If you wish to reproduce any of the images from this website elsewhere on the internet, please credit jrstereocollection.com.

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