Wet Collodion and a pair of lenses. Carlos Relvas's stereoscopic photography: the digital reunion of negatives and prints (original) (raw)
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Carlos Relvas’s Stereoscopic Photography: The Digital Reunion of Negatives and Prints
History of Photography
European stereoscopic photography owes a significant part of its cultural specificity to amateur photographers who resorted to the wet collodion process to document nature with reduced exposure times and to perfect their photographic art with crisper and more detailed images. The Portuguese Carlos Relvas (1838–94) was one of these renowned collodion practitioners. Until recently, most of his stereoscopic collections remained undigitised and unstudied, and the contribution of stereoscopy to the launch of his international career was little known. The building of an online catalogue raisonné dedicated to Relvas’s stereoscopic photography has been an opportunity to undertake a combined study of his stereoscopic negatives and prints, making it possible to retrieve new information about the extent, importance and evolution of his stereoscopic work. While designed to make these collections digitally available, the catalogue offers a new perspective on the specific value of stereoscopic negatives and cross-referenced ‘image families’ for a new understanding of photographic practice. By re-examining the opportunities offered by digital collections, this article sheds light on their potential to remodel the memory and historic value of a nineteenth-century photographer and, in particular, to properly showcase stereoscopic photography.
Flores, Victor (ed.) - "A Terceira Imagem: A Fotografia Estereoscópica em Portugal / The Third Image: Stereo Photography in Portugal" [Short preview version], 2016
Na visão vemos duas vezes um mesmo objecto e as duas imagens fundem-se no cérebro em uma terceira puramente sensorial.» With vision, we see twice the same object and the two images merge in the brain to form a purely sensorial third image. Photographico, n.º 26, Julho, 1908 À memória de Berta Costa Campos, amiga mestre da luz 7 a terceira imagem | the third image Este livro resulta do trabalho de uma larga comunidade de pessoas e instituições que têm em comum uma forte paixão pela imagem. Na verdade, é no seu trabalho que assenta a vida e a sobrevivência das imagens que agora publicamos, assim como qualquer possibilidade de uma sua arqueologia. A visibilidade e por vezes mesmo a magia das imagens assenta na discrição das suas funções: restauro e conservação, catalogação e inventário, curadoria e acesso ao público, análise e reflexão crítica, são algumas das principais áreas de trabalho com as quais a investigação deste livro se cruzou, dando-nos a possibilidade de conhecer pessoas extraordinárias e empenhadas que emprestaram o seu entusiasmo, confiança e profissionalismo a este projecto.
Spanish Stereoscopic Commercial Photography in the 20th Century: “El Turismo Práctico” and “Rellev”
International Journal on Stereo & Immersive Media, 2019
Throughout the twentieth century, the two major projects carried out in Spain to commercialize ste- reoscopic photography were those of the Barcelona publishing house Alberto Martín and the photo- grapher José Codina Torrás, both projects with an obvious tourist orientation. During the decade of 1910, the publishing house Alberto Martín launches a collection of stereosco- pic views of Spanish cities and monuments entitled "El Turismo Práctico”. The views were presented in standard size card mounts, grouped by cities, usually presented in envelopes with fifteen prints. On the other hand, José Codina Torrás starts to make stereoscopic series in 1929 on the occasion of the international fairs of Seville and Barcelona. He uses the Verascope format (45x110 mm): positive glass plates marketed in cardboard boxes and grouped by themes. Later he published his collection of Spanish views in card mounts (6x13 mm). Along with these, and under the brand “Rellev”, he launches between 1930 and 1936 a range of side products, including various types of stereoscopes and projectors.
The Third Image. Stereo Photography in Portugal , 2019, 2019
Nowadays, nineteenth century stereoscopic photography can surprise 3D cinema spectators, touchscreen users and virtual reality players. It can surprise them by demonstrating that current visual experiences with three-dimensionality and with virtual touch were being prepared since the early days of photography. On the other hand, stereo photography was able to document reality (short exposures and rich details) in such a way that allowed a more spontaneous and current coverage of reality, thus anticipating several photojournalism and cinema experiences. Portugal has a wide and rich legacy of stereoscopic photography, a practice that remained popular until the first decades of the twentieth century, with some of its practitioners receiving prizes in international competitions and being featured at Universal Exhibitions. To revisit stereoscopy can be a journey to the magic world of immersive images and the multiple sensorial experiences with which modern times have tested them. This book invites us to that revisitation, revealing the cultural imaginary, the speeches, and the commercial practices which ensured stereo photography a solid and unique place in the Portuguese visual culture.
(Ed. Victor Flores) Lisboa, Documenta, 2016
Livro final do projeto de pesquisa sobre fotografia esteresocópica em Portugal. Contribuo com dois artigos neste livro: "Hamilton e Zeca: um par estereoscópico de Alberto Marçal Brandão", sobre a presença de observadores nas imagens deste fotografo e numa já longa cultura visual; e "As faces da Imagem" sobre uma fotografia estereoscópica de Aurélio da Paz dos Reis. Final Book of the research project Stereo Visual Culture. The Visual Culture of Stereoscopic Photography in Portugal. In this book I publish two articles, one on the stereosgraphic work of Alberto Marla Brandão, and the presence of the observer in the images, tracing this visual tradition; the other, about a specific stereo photography of the Portuguese pioneer of cinema and great stereo photographer, Aurélio Paz dos Reis.
Lisbon and its region: stereoscopic photography, ca. 1853-1890
"International Journal on Stereo & Immersive Media", vol. 1, n. 2, pp. 4-31, 2017
This paper concerns the use of stereoscopic photography in Lisbon and its region, especially in Sintra, from the 1850s to the end of the 1880s. We will synthetically address the documents and images generated by professional and amateur photographers, their context and their themes.
Early Popular Visual Culture, 2016
Cinema was born in a visual culture where stereoscopy played a crucial role. In this paper, we will discuss how stereoscopy and cinema derived from a common programme caused by photography that brought images and life closer, boosting an unseen period of mergers and experiments in the history of the image. The project of moving images was also a stereoscopic project. To animate the images in relief was one of the main challenges of the realism desired by nineteenth-century visual culture. In particular, I will reflect on the stereoscopic photography by Aurélio da Paz dos Reis, his cinematic experiments, the major discourses that followed and the ‘archive fever’ that hit it. Furthermore, I will consider the specificities of stereoscopy as a personal, as opposed to communal, medium and technique. I also argue that if the nineteenth-century stereo visual culture has anticipated our current personal media age, the unstable presence of stereoscopy in the twentieth-century mass media culture becomes an understandable and inevitable phenomenon.
Sophia Journal, 2016
From a photograph (2007 World Press Photo Award) taken in the Summer of 2006 by the photojournalist Spencer Platt (1970- ) in a ruined Beirut, after Israeli bombings, the text tries, through the concept(s) of visual representation, to discuss the disintegration of the boundaries between the visible and the invisible in photographic images and to demonstrate how this disintegration leads the viewer to operate the construction of the visual. In this process he builds himself up as something more than the visual subject: a seer subject capable of visionary perceptive experiences. Divided into three parts: presence /apparition, vision/clairvoyance and image/reflection, the present essay goes back to the unknown stereoscopic photographic work of the Portuguese naturalist Francisco Afonso Chaves (1857-1926) and, in particular, to his experience regarding the fusion of different images, with the intention of comprehending how, in Portugal, these constitute one of the pioneer cases of visual extension through photography.
International Journal on Stereo & Immersive Media, 2019
This paper is intended to give an example of the impact of optical shows in relation to the dissemination of stereoscopy in Spain. Concretely, I will be focusing on a stereoscopic show run by the optician Francisco Dalmau, established in La Rambla in Barcelona, which remained open from 1853 to 1863. Evidence seems to point to the fact that it was the first time that stereo photography was presented as part of an optical show in the city. By analyzing this case, I will attempt to illustrate the visual novelty, the level of acceptance and then great popularity of the stereoscope compared to other entertainment in this period. Finally, I will present new data concerning a stereo photography studio that Dalmau opened in 1854.
Sophia, 2016
Partindo de uma fotografia (Prémio World Press Photo 2007) captada no verão de 2006 pelo fotojornalista Spencer Platt (1970-) numa Beirute em ruínas, após os bombardeamentos israelitas, o texto procura, a partir do(s) conceito(s) de representação visual, debater a desintegração das fronteiras entre o visível e o invisível nas imagens fotográficas e demonstrar como é sobre esta desintegração que o observador opera a construção do visual. Neste processo ele constrói-se a si próprio como algo mais do que um sujeito visual: um sujeito vidente capaz de experiências perceptivas visionárias. Organizada em três partes: presença / aparição, visão / vidência e imagem / reflexo, o artigo recua à desconhecida obra fotográfica estereoscópica do naturalista português Francisco Afonso Chaves (1857-1926) e, em particular, às suas experiências de fusão de diferentes imagens, com o intuito de compreender como estas constituem um dos casos pioneiros em Portugal de alargamento do visual por via da fotografia.