Stereoscopy is Good For You: Life in 3-D

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Sir Brian May and co author, Professor Dante Lauretta, along with Professor Sara Russell of the Natural History Museum, will take you on a spectacular stereoscopic 3-D journey of the hazardous asteroid. Does Brian think that some would-be exponents are put off by the time involved in stereoscopic photography? Or have apps made it much easier? The rivalries which led to serial misinformation are thoroughly explored in this work, and the result is a proper and final restoration of Charles Wheatstone as the true discoverer of Stereopsis, and the true inventor of the Stereoscope, the ancestor of every 3-D and Virtual Reality device in the world today. Now, it does get to be more of a decision as you get older. I’m not 35 anymore, and leaving home for two months is not easy. For the first time at Watts Gallery, discover an exhibition dedicated to a 19th century craze that saw the birth of 3D images.

Discover the 19th-century art of stereoscopy, which saw a second wave of popularity in the mid-20th century. It was at that time that the young Sir Brian May – later the lead guitarist for Queen – began his passion for this photographic phenomenon and formed his world-leading collection of stereoscopy.The book credits Charles Wheatstone as the inventor of the stereoscope. “He was denied his proper place, other people claimed that they had invented it, and some of those falsehoods survived until quite recently,” said May. The book sets the record straight, he added. It’s the same with music. With Queen, we have always tried to play to the people and disregard the political situation. Music is about connecting people, and that’s our job, and it’s the same with photography. That said, none of us wants to put any kind of approval on what Russia is doing as a country right now. It’s an incredibly painful situation.’ A real eye-opener

May and his co-author Denis Pellerin, a French academic who joins us for the interview, believe Wheatstone should be as well-known as more famous Victorian-era inventors such as Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. It’s one of the reasons they wrote Stereoscopy: The Dawn of 3-D – to try to raise Wheatstone’s profile. This show exhibits new 3-D photography from the LSC’s latest publication “Stereoscopy Is Good For You: Life in 3-D”. But the presentation also includes a dazzling array of historical images communicating the excitement of Stereoscopy in Victorian times, and a selection of Brian May’s own stereoscopic work depicting QUEEN from the inside, as well as his own history in stereoscopy. We saw projected 3D images of Brian with his stereo camera in his early Queen years, along with a picture of Freddie taking a picture of Brian taking a photo. I now have an indelible disposition to look at scenes and see them “properly” in stereo. A lot of people go through almost their whole lives without realising they have this wonderful depth of perception. My job as the stereoscopic evangelist is to go, “No, there is a way you can transform your pictures into a format that will enable you to enjoy them forever as you did at the time of capture.”’

It’s a hard life

While getting books signed by Brian May, visitors will also have the opportunity to explore the wonders of the exhibition - Stereoscopy Is Good For You: Life in 3-D. For the next 5 months, the exhibition will offer visitors the chance to experience 3-D first-hand, using May’s patent OWL viewers, in three areas channelling the new SIGFY book, the Birth of Stereoscopy, and Queen in 3-D.’

We all carry them around with us. If phone makers can put three cameras on here (he holds up his iPhone) it would be dead easy for them to put lenses one across the other.’ To be honest, yes, I didn’t realise how far the message had got. As I say in the introduction to the book, this is a kind of evangelical effort. I still believe we can properly put stereoscopy on the map. Queen star Brian May and Denis Pellerin are releasing Stereoscopy: The Dawn of 3D in November through The London Stereoscopic Company. I did a design to turn an iPhone into a stereo camera instantly,’ he reveals, ‘but nobody took me up on it. Yes, we now have the crowdfunded Qoocam, which is a nice stereo stills and movie camera, but it would be nice to have something built into phones.The British Library and Kings College here: https://www.bl.uk/events/stereoscopy-the-dawn-of-3d-brian-may-and-denis-pellerin