Stereoscopic Viewers

Casa-Estúdio Carlos Relvas

Until now, the only evidence of their existence was a wet collodion stereoscopic negative depicting the studio’s waiting room. In 2021, Victor Flores described this image as follows:

“Looking carefully at the stereo view of the luxurious waiting room of Relvas’s  House-Studio, inaugurated in 1875, we notice the presence, among the  sideboards on the right, of two magnificent floor stereoscopes, part of the entertainment offered to visitors while they waited to be photographed even if Relvas was no longer making stereographs by that time. These elegant viewers played a double role in the  waiting room – they offered a comfortable and prolonged stereoscopic experience to the  studio visitors, and they preserved images that were slowly becoming part of the past. At the time, these viewers were also known as ‘archivers’ or ‘cabinets’ as they served to store up to two hundred views, viewed in set combinations and sequences.It is not possible to know what these ‘visual machines’, now missing, showed at the time. They did, however, fulfil a function that became crucial to modern visual culture and to its industrial image production, one that today is realised by digital archives that assemble photographs by metadata, allowing a new understanding and access to non-digital born collections.” (pages 240-241)

Flores, V. (2021). Carlos Relvas’s Stereoscopic Photography: The Digital Reunion of Negatives and Prints. History of Photography, 44(4), 231–248.

A stereoscopic photograph by Carlos Relvas of the waiting room in his Casa-Estúdio, where the stereoscopic viewers can be seen on the right-hand side (1874–1875).

For further information on Carlos Relvas’ stereoscopic work, see his Catalogue Raisonné: https://carlosrelvascatalogue.pt/