Stereographs of Travel

Stereograph companies sent their photographers all over the world to capture different cultures and places. As a result “millions of armchair travelers enjoyed countless hours of entertainment, taking their first look at the world beyond their own neighborhood.”

They could be bought like postcards but many of these sets contained at narrative element written on the back of the stereograph. There the reader could learn more about the subject or history. There were often written in the present-tense with descriptions of the pictures often preceded by phrases such as "as you can see" or "we are standing beside." This created for viewers the companionable voice of a docent, whose narration was a mixture of past factual information with present sensory experience of the scene. Much like travel documentaries are today these stereographs opened up a whole new world to viewers.

Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, "the sights which men risk their lives and spend their money and endure sea-sickness to behold, the view of Nature and Art which makes exiles of entire families for the sake of a look at them, and render `bronchitis' and dyspepsia, followed by leave of absence, endurable dispensations to so many worthy shepherds, these sights, gathered from Alps, temples, palaces, pyramids, are offered you for a trifle, to carry home with you, that you many look at them at your leisure, by your fireside, with perpetual fair weather, when you are in the mood, without catching cold."

These cards were even used to teach American children about geography, natural history, and a range of other subjects and held a high academic perception. In actuality they served to reinforce, historically situated cultural assumptions. “The age of the stereograph coincided with an age of imperial expansion, and some historians have argued that this is no coincidence.” 

 "As a medium, stereography allowed the viewer to participate in the visible effects of the age's political and economic conquests." 

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4. Vanderknyff, Rick. 2007. "Parlor Illusions: Stereoscopic Views of Sub-Saharan Africa." African Arts 40, no. 3: 50-63. OmniFile Full Text Mega (H.W. Wilson), EBSCOhost (accessed April 30, 2015).