| We live in a three-dimensional environment. We can perceive depth because, when each eye sees a slightly different version of the same image, the brain combines both views into a single, three-dimensional “stereo” picture. It is a relatively simple process, one that stereoscopic photography, the method I use to make images, can successfully mimic by using two images from slightly different perspectives to affect a realistic sense of depth. I display my images in a small viewer box mounted on a pedestal. This viewer contains the two film transparencies that make up the stereoscopic image, as well as a lens for each eye, which focuses that eye on only one of the two images. |  |
Peter Bahouth
We live in a three-dimensional environment. We can perceive depth because, when each eye sees a slightly different version of the same image, the brain combines both views into a single, three-dimensional “stereo” picture. It is a relatively simple process, one that stereoscopic photography, the method I use to make images, can successfully mimic by using two images from slightly different perspectives to affect a realistic sense of depth.
I display my images in a small viewer box mounted on a pedestal. This viewer contains the two film transparencies that make up the stereoscopic image, as well as a lens for each eye, which focuses that eye on only one of the two images. Properly done, this creates a startlingly true sense of depth perception in the view. Looking into the viewer in this way also removes all other external visual information. This focus of visual perception through the display and onto an image where depth and space are intensified is intended to create a more personal experience with the subject. By totally isolating the visual experience as well, there is a sense of being projected into the image and into another place and time.
Stereo photography, for me, is more than a way of portraying space. It is also a way to acknowledge the aesthetic issues raised by the biology of vision. Concepts of vision and perspective have been central to my work with stereoscopic photography, but I am equally motivated by a personal history with stereo images and an interest in the unique role that this medium plays in contemporary art.
The word “stereo” derives from the Greek word meaning “relating to space.” As early as 300 BCE, Euclid conducted research into “stereo vision” and the idea that each eye sees the world differently. Later, around 1520, Leonardo da Vinci was struggling with the fact that he could not portray on canvas the world as seen by humans. He tried to mimic the difference in one’s perception of objects in his drawings through the use of various backgrounds and perspectives. Eventually, he upheld earlier findings of binocular vision, recognizing the differences between the perception of a scene and a painting of it, which he then reduced to the differences between binocular and monocular vision. Much as he tried, he could not produce on canvas an equivalent configuration. Stereoscopic photography came about in the late 1830s, simultaneous with the invention of photography itself and, within ten years of the world’s first photographic works, stereoscopic cards were being made and sold in the marketplace. From 1860 to 1920, stereo views were immensely popular—essentially the home entertainment of the times. At a period when travel was extremely limited, the millions of stereo views sold during this period were a way for people to experience a deeper sense of a wide variety of places and activities. In fact, the power of the technology to convey a sense of place helped establish Yellowstone as the first national park, when a series of stereo views of the area were distributed to members of Congress in 1871.
Interest in stereography steadily waned in the 1920s and beyond, but experienced a brief upsurge in the early 1950s, when the availability of commercial “stereo” cameras made it possible to create personal stereo images. Coupled with the introduction of ultra-saturated Kodachrome film, family snapshots in stereoscopic views color an indelible image of our perception of the time. It was, in fact, examples like my father’s stereo photographs of our family—along with the ubiquitous View-Master photo wheels—which, for many of us, comprised our first photographic collection and which formed my interest in stereoscopic images and their ability to convey spatial relationships and intensified perceptions of time, place and feelings.
The manipulation of binocular space and the superb realism of stereoscopy are central to my contemporary work. Stereoscopic perception, like color perception, can be controlled artistically.
The resulting illusion of depth mimics the way we see the world, and, because of this, it is an important component in my photography. I mostly photograph people or things that have a tangible relationship to their surroundings. I might photograph people at a long narrow club, a painter in a freshly painted room or a stuffed animal at Stonehenge. Throughout, however, these images are meant to articulate the ways in which we relate to our surroundings, and to address issues of portraying perspective in contemporary photography. A photographer can be very much like an anthropologist, and his or her work like a diorama of Plains Indians at a natural history museum. This type of work may give us more spatial information about the scale and scope of another environment. Thus, the use of dimension and depth in my photographs mimics reality while, hopefully, deepening a sense of being there.
