Carlos Relvas’s Stereoscopic Photography: The Digital Reunion of Negatives and Prints

Abstract

European stereoscopic photography owes a significant part of its cultural specificity to amateur photographers who resorted to the wet collodion process to document nature with reduced exposure times and to perfect their photographic art with crisper and more detailed images. The Portuguese Carlos Relvas (1838–94) was one of these renowned collodion practitioners. Until recently, most of his stereoscopic collections remained undigitised and unstudied, and the contribution of stereoscopy to the launch of his international career was little known. The building of an online catalogue raisonné dedicated to Relvas’s stereoscopic photography has been an opportunity to undertake a combined study of his stereoscopic negatives and prints, making it possible to retrieve new information about the extent, importance and evolution of his stereoscopic work. While designed to make these collections digitally available, the catalogue offers a new perspective on the specific value of stereoscopic negatives and cross-referenced ‘image families’ for a new understanding of photographic practice. By re-examining the opportunities offered by digital collections, this article sheds light on their potential to remodel the memory and historic value of a nineteenth-century photographer and, in particular, to properly showcase stereoscopic photography.