Shifting scenes of colouration and illumination: the narrative and temporal fluidities of tissue paper stereoviews

Abstract

ABSTRACT Between the invention of photography and the advent of film there arose a singular visual medium: tissue paper stereoviews of the 1860s that permitted the viewer to change a scene from greyscale and unilluminated to colour and illuminated when viewed through a stereoscope. These dual images, photographed using a camera with two lenses, were printed, hand-coloured, and perforated on layers of tissue paper and then placed side-by-side in cardboard mounts. The shifts along the greyscale/color unilluminated/illuminated continua merely depended upon the angle of light striking the stereoview, and the viewer could vary the pace and direction of the transformation. Objects did not move, but intensely three-dimensional scenes of receding planes of depth changed at will, sometimes depicting a shift from day to night, but often producing ambiguous scenes that challenged such a binary division of time. The narrative and temporal fluidities that tissue paper made possible differentiated these stereoviews from their counterparts produced on glass or card stock. The seamless, silent, flicker-free transformation of scenes offered viewers a deeply immersive, three-dimensional visual experience that was distinctly different from the plethora of mechanical animated stereoscopes that arose at the same time. Likewise, it was different from dioramas because unlike those communal visual experiences, the tissue paper stereoview experience was entirely in control of the user. Because the shifts back and forth between greyscale and colour comprise the most salient feature of the medium, experience glancing toward the colouring of early film stock that can help establish a frame of reference in which to assess tissue paper stereoviews. It is for this reason that an analysis of applied colour of early film is pulled into the discussion.