P3D Not much changes

[John Bradley <JB3D@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I spent yesterday in the splendid new British Library in London.
 A masterpiece of architecture and worth a ViewMaster reel
in its own right. I was researching a 19th Century stereographer
from the little town of Matlock in Derbyshire near where I live-
John Latham.
I sat for 8 hours reading through the bound volumes of the British
Journal of Photography from 1858 onwards. The correspondence
pages in particular were fascinating, and after a few editions I had
a feeling of deja vu.  Many of the early correspondents were stereo
photographers , and often they don't even bother to define their
photos as "stereo , just call them photographs and know that 
everyone will assume they mean stereo.  They wrote in
with suggestions for the best way to process their work; argued
about which cameras and lenses were best; and anwered
each others questions. There was even flaming as they argued
heatedly about some technical or aesthetic point. There were
spoof letters and jokes, and at one point some key players
went off in a sulk after they had been criticised.
Now what did all this remind me of?
It's good to put ourselves in some sort of historical perspective-
the medium may have changed , but we are the direct decendants
of those early stereo pioneers, and from my reading yesterday
we've still got a lot in common with them.

John Bradley
JB3D@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx


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