Why ‘Stereoscopy is Good for You’ is Good for You

 Where can you see a world of photos taken during the Covid pandemic, a ‘Victorian Emporium,’ and a pictorial history of the rock band Queen all under one roof?

Answer: at the ‘Stereoscopy is Good for You: Life in 3D’ exhibition at Proud Galleries near Charing Cross, now extended to 8^th April!

What is stereoscopy, and when did it all start?  Well, it’s basically photography (two photos placed side by side) viewed in 3D, and its beginnings were almost simultaneous with its 2D counterpart. You can find out more about this at the back of the exhibition, where the ‘Victorian Emporium’ awaits you, inviting you into the world of early stereoscopy, and where you can learn about it - in 3D - from photo historian Denis Pellerin, who explains how popular it was at the time.

Here you can also see a miscellany of stereoscopic equipment – and it was one such gadget, obtained through an offer found in a Weetabix cereal box, that first got a seven-year-old Brian May - who later became Queen's lead guitarist - interested in the subject, leading to a lifelong passion. Eventually, in 2008, it spurred him into reviving the long defunct London Stereoscopic Company, which had closed down eighty-six years before. It had, in fact, been founded back in 1854, sixteen years after the initial invention of stereoscopic technology by a certain Charles Wheatstone.

Before you arrive in the ‘Victorian Emporium’, with its quaint little table lamp lighting up one corner, you pass through an exhibition of a selection of work from contributors to the book published late last year, ‘Stereoscopy is Good for You: Life in 3D’, for which members of the public were invited to submit entries. Here, displayed in poster size, an international array of recent subjects is presented, ranging from animals and the natural world to landscapes, each of which is also available in small-size duplicate format, together with an individual stereoscope for the 3D effect. What’s more, you can use a stereoscopic viewer to look at a wide variety of other pictorial studies.

Venturing downstairs, there's a similar viewer displaying a selection of photos from the history of Queen, taken by Dr. May, providing a fascinating insight into the band members at work and at play, and many of those appearing on the wall are accompanied by his personal commentary. You can also watch him present a highly informative 3D video dealing with the history of 3D movies, which have staged a comeback in more recent times, having been popular in the 1950s, but which were then usurped in the public's affection by the advent of widescreen: depth losing out to breadth. In fact, when I told my 94-year-old dad about the exhibition, I discovered that his knowledge of 3D technology dated back to that post-war heyday, and he was still able to recite a limerick about it from the time:

A young lady, just twenty-three
Said, "Today I feel careless and free
I'll walk through the park
And just for a lark
I'll be photographed nude in 3D!"

Maybe now is the time for stereoscopy to re-enter public consciousness and popular culture once more – Sir Brian certainly hopes so. As he put it, going back to that first magical  ‘wow’ experience when he saw a double picture through the stereoscope as a child, “If you can take 3D pictures, why would you bother taking 2D pictures?”

Open: Tuesday to Sunday

Also includes a Gift Shop selling plenty of interesting books with different themes given the stereoscopic treatment, including the one with the same title as the exhibition!