The stereoscopic attraction

Abstract

While the commonly received wisdom in scholarship of early stereoscopy asserts that it fell victim to photography’s success and eventually ‘died’ in the late 1930s, this article calls for a less determinist reading of stereoscopy’s place in media culture. Such a change requires the recognition that stereoscopy is a technique applicable across media, not a continually dying and reborn medium. Arguing that the stereograph laid some of the groundwork for the ‘cinema of attractions’ before it suffered from cinema’s capacity to supply precisely such spectacular modes of visual engagement on a grander sale, this article suggests that there is much to be taken from understanding early stereoscopy as a prototypical attraction. In the current context, in which not just three-dimensional (3D) cinema but also 3D television and 3D gaming all offer new forms of stereoscopic attraction, the content of early spectacular stereocards offers a wealth of source material with which to understand a newly resurgent form.