Tonight, February 3rd, from 4 to 7 pm, will be a reception for the gallery exhibit, Victorian Narrative Stereography: 1855-1910, at the Little Gallery of Sage College of Albany. It is located on campus, in Rathbone Hall, 140 New Scotland Avenue, Albany, NY. Afterwards, the exhibit will be open thru February 26, Sunday - Friday, Noon - 4 pm.

Click here for a link to the Little Gallery web page.

And here, to open a pdf file version of the catalog for the show.

Curated by Sage Assistant Professor Dr. Melody Davis, the exhibit presents original Victorian comic and genre stereoview sequences — i.e., 3D 19th century multi-photo sequential narratives, telling often comic episodes, in a fashion similar to multi-panel comic strips. Lorgnette stereoviewers, which you hold up to see through, will be available, for visitors to view the scenes in 3D.

(Above, from the April 16th, 1859 issue of the British Punch, we see a man looking through the window of a stereoview shop, knocked closer to that window by two passing boys.)

Professor Davis’ doctoral dissertation treated the subject of women in narrative stereography, focusing both upon the depiction of gender and women as patrons of the medium. Her article, “The New Woman in American Stereography,
1870-1900″, was recently published in The New Woman International: Photography
and Film, 1890-1930 (University of Michigan Press, 2011).

Click on the above & below cartoons, to view them in detail, and read the captions.

Above, from Ballou’s Monthly, October 1862, comes Beauties of the Stereoscope. Below, So Like Matrimony, by Henry L. Stephens, from the July 7th, 1860 Vanity Fair.

Below, four stereoview cards from the narrative sequence, Woman will no longer be the mere slave (title taken from the 2nd view). The full six-card sequence, published in 1900 by Strohmeyer & Wyman, is part of the show.

Click on the below stereoviews, to see them in detail, and read their captions.

In addition to the stereoviews themselves, there will be a small number of Victiorian Age cartoons & comic strip sequences, which I have lent to the show. These parallel the themes shown in the stereoviews, and in a few cases, demonstrate how one format straight out ripped off — or inspired — the other (and vice-versa).

Amongst the comics shown, is the below two-page sequence, Stereoscopic Slides, by artist Frank Bellew, Sr., joking that looking at 3D stereoviews for too long, can make one cross-eyed. It appeared in the October, 1860 edition of Harper’s Monthly. (Of the cartoons I am posting here, only the below two pages are in the show.)

In addition to the lorgnette viewers and exhibited stereoviews, the exhibit features a Victorian parlor, with the more common type of stereoviewer, and a sampling of cards for visitors to experience viewing, as shown in the cartoon below.

By artist Livingston Hopkins, the below is but one panel from a multi-panel sequence titled The Melancholy Days, found on the front page of the October 11th, 1882 issue of the (New York) Daily Graphic.

Doug Wheeler

BritPunch NYDailyGraphic