Abstract

Underwood and Underwood’s Rome through the Stereoscope of 1902 was a landmark in stereoscopic photography publishing, both as an intense, visually immersive experience and as a cognitively demanding exercise. The set consisted of a guidebook, forty-six stereographs, and five maps whose notations enabled the reader/viewer to precisely replicate the location and orientation of the photographer at each site. Combined with the extensive narrative within the guidebook, the maps and images guided its users through the city via forty-six sites, whether as an example of armchair travel or an actual travel companion. The user’s experience is examined and analyzed within the following parameters: the medium of stereoscopic photography, narrative, geographical imagination, and memory, bringing forth issues of movement, survey and route frames of reference, orientation, visualization, immersion, and primary versus secondary memories. Rome through the Stereoscope was an example of virtual travel, and the process of fusing dual images into one — stereoscopic synthesis — further demarcated the experience as a virtual environment.

Highlights

  • At the beginning of the 20th century, an innovative series of travel sets consisting of coordinated stereographs, guidebooks, and maps by the publishing house of Underwood and Underwood helped to revitalize the industry of stereoscopic photography, which was entering its second halfcentury

  • The guidebook and maps, certainly were objects managed by a t­ ourist walking through the streets of Rome, and this introduces the notion of memory: the traveler already would have progressed through the ‘­itinerary’ of the book and experienced the visually immersive experience of viewing the set’s stereographs

  • An objection might be raised that the images in Rome through the Stereoscope were not those taken by the reader/viewer, but rather by one of Underwood’s photographers, so how could such images activate imaginative mobility and memory travel? The question is precisely why Underwood created its distinctive maps, and the textual narrative, so that the reader/viewer would come to experience the precise stances of the photographer and the precise route he took to go from site to site

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Summary

Introduction

At the beginning of the 20th century, an innovative series of travel sets consisting of coordinated stereographs, guidebooks, and maps by the publishing house of Underwood and Underwood helped to revitalize the industry of stereoscopic photography, which was entering its second halfcentury. This essay examines this travel set by analyzing the user’s experience within the following parameters: the medium of stereoscopic photography, narrative, geographical imagination, and memory.

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