Between nonfiction screen practice and nonfiction peep practice: The Keystone ‘600 Set’ and the geographical mode of representation

Abstract

Cinema historians have identified the magic lantern’s important role in the nonfiction and documentary traditions that preceded the emergence of the narrativized documentary film. But an examination of the Keystone ‘600 Set’, a seminal series of educational views, shows that the lantern enjoyed a sustained engagement with stereographs, motion pictures, and other pedagogical media into the 1960s. Governed by a geographical mode of representation, Keystone’s integrated system of lantern slides and stereographs illuminates the longer intertwining histories of nonfiction ‘screen’ and ‘peep’ practices, which animate our relationship with the world, and which are foundational to educational and documentary cinema.