The Library Company of Philadelphia houses these nineteenth century stereoscopes. They’re in 3D, well they are if you render the side-by-side images would render in 3D, notes Rebecca Onions. Pull on your specs and look to the the stereographs’ at the Company of Philadelphia.
Photo Via.
Library Company curator Connie King explains the culture:
“The humor for 19th– and early-20th-century viewers was based, in part, on the assumption that women were innocents where sex was concerned.”
Sure they were.
What do people do in private when no one is watching? A small but significant number of stereographs provided answers to this eternal question. Home entertainment in the 19th and early 20th century included looking at stereographs in stereoviewers, which created the illusion of 3D. At a time when a glimpse of stocking was shocking, boudoir scenes – staged with two or more women – were a popular theme in genre stereographs. Such images would have allowed more of a “gaze” than a “glimpse”!
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