Stereoscopy and Pre-Raphaelitism

Abstract

My argument attempts to rethink discourse on John Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelite paintings in terms of media and technological concerns. In particular, I discuss their discourse in relation to the Victorian optical practice of the stereoscope. The visual space of the stereoscope is radically different from the mimetic capacities of photography, film and television in that stereoscopy depends on the absence of any mediation between the viewing subject and the object. In this respect, it is possible to argue that stereoscopic images have echoes of dematerialised computer-generated imagery. According to technological determinists, digital image production technologies are entirely 'new' practices which will completely change cultural forms. However, the emergence of new media specifically and technology generally does not occur outside the most dominant and pervasive media, but occurs within existing social relations, cultural forms and their histories. The emergence of image production technologies in nineteenth-century visual culture is not simply the product of the so-called 'age of mechanical reproduction'. In this paper, this is discussed by drawing on discourses on Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites.