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.

I discovered that stereoscopic material could be found at auctions run by Christie’s and Bonhams, and from a number of specialist dealers, and began to acquire examples of, mainly British, stereographs, along with 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 could be found in the genre scenes, still life subjects, and views of landmarks and beauty spots created by those pioneer photographers.

The first photographer whose work I collected in depth was G.W,Wilson of Aberdeen, inspired by Roger Taylor’s 1981 study which incorporated Wilson’s ‘1863 List of Stereoscopic and Album Views’, numbered 1-440. That list gave me a target which seemed manageable and I set out to acquire as many of the views as possible. 30 years later there are still a handful from that initial list that I have been unable to track down but, in the meantime, I have widened my search and added over a thousand more of Wilson’s beautiful views of the British Isles to my collection. Anyone interested in taking stereoscopic landscape photographs would benefit from studying G.W.W.’s work as, in my opinion, he understands how to compose an image for the stereoscope better than any of his contemporaries, although I have developed an admiration for Francis Bedford and William Russell Sedgfield too. Wilson’s stereoviews were instrumental in popularising tourism in the Highlands and, for my part, I followed in his footsteps to Loch Katrine and the Trossachs, amongst other destinations.

In 1994 I wrote an article about G.W.Wilson for Stereo World which you can read here:

The next group of photographers whose work I was able to identify specialised in the studio compositions now known as ‘Genre’; staged scenes often involving elaborate sets and a cast of actors/models, telling moral tales; sentimentalising or poking fun at aspects of Victorian life, or dramatising well-known stories.  The first of these I became familiar with were James Elliott and Alfred Silvester, both masters of the genre, whose beautifully crafted images were almost like small scale theatrical productions, frequently hand-coloured with a high degree of skill, in which you can immerse yourself with the aid of a stereoscope or by ‘freeviewing’ the cards, (a skill similar to that used to view the ‘Magic Eye’ pictures of the 1980s).

In 2014, Brian May’s newly relaunched London Stereoscopic Company published a book with the title “The Poor Man’s Picture Gallery’, written by the photo historian Denis Pellerin, and edited by Sir Brian, which drew comparisons between 19th century paintings in London’s Tate Gallery and stereoscopic photographs from that era which adapted the fine art images for the newly popular stereoscope, making them accessible to a wider audience. The book identified a number of photographers whose names I was not so familiar with and inspired me to search for them on eBay, which by then had vastly widened the marketplace available to me.

So I learned to recognise the work of Michael Burr, C.E.Goodman, James Eastlake, Samuel Poulton, T.R.Williams, J.Reynolds, the Gaudin Brothers and a number of other photographers who were active in the 1850s and 60s, which to my mind is the apogee of creativity in stereo photography.

Having now collected several of these photographers works in depth, I felt it was time to document my holdings on a website, in the way that I have done with my hologram collection, so I have again collaborated with my colleague Andrew Pepper to present the material to you here. I hope you enjoy what you find and that it will represent a useful resource for collectors and researchers of photographic history.

Jonathan Ross
May 2024