New Stereo site Launched
A new section of the Jonathan Ross Collection has been launched.
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.
A wide range of photographers are presented with extensive images and notes about their work.
The site also includes links to other Stereo and Stereoview resources.
It is an ongoing project which will be updated over the following months.
Michael Burr - Stereo Photographer
Jonathan Ross has contributed an article about Victorian stereo photographer Michael Burr, to The Stereosite.
"Michael Burr was one of the most prolific photographers of staged genre stereoviews in the Victorian era. Following in the footsteps of masters like James Elliott and Alfred Silvester and frequently adapting the themes of other popular photographers, this Birmingham based entrepreneur created a catalogue estimated at over 1,000 images during a period from 1862 to the mid 1870s and evidently sold his work in large quantities as there are so many of his stereoviews still surviving."........
19th Century Stereographs
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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. Fast forward to 1990 and I had become immersed in holography, the ultimate in late 20th century 3D and gradually began 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. Over the next ten years or so I amassed a sizeable collection of, mostly British, stereographs, and viewers of all shapes and sizes. I collected views of places I knew or was planning to visit and of subjects that appealed to me for a variety of reasons. All Victorian life was there in Genre Scenes, Still Life subjects, Pretty Girls, Children & Animals, and views of Landmarks and Beauty Spots throughout the UK. As I became more discerning I took a special interest in particular photographers: the Landscape views of G.W.Wilson and the Genre views of Elliott and Silvester. These latter, mostly hand-coloured, images tend to be studio compositions, often with elaborate sets, telling Moral Tales , sentimentalising or poking fun at aspects of Victorian Life, or dramatising Well-Known Stories. The best examples are real jewels, dramatically composed and delicately coloured, and even these, at the time I bought them, were seldom more than £10 - £15 each which, considering that such fragile materials as paper and cardboard had managed to survive over 100 years, seems pretty good to me. The selection of stereographs I am presenting here are some of my favourites from the Genre section of my collection. Some are from sequences or series that revealed themselves as I continued to visit dealers and fairs though, since I haven't come across any lists on which these images feature, I can't be sure that I have them in the correct order. I don't think it matters though as I enjoy looking at each one individually and I hope you will too. Jonathan Ross June 2007 |
