Columbus Georgia's personalities and places - project to create stereo cards for 3-D pictures of local residents and sites

How would you like to be able to visit your local library and look at stereo cards with 3-D pictures of educators, politicians, doctors, artists and various other people from your city or community, which were made in the late 1800s? In progress is a community stereographic project which will, hopefully, provide a somewhat similar capability to future generations of Columbus, Georgia, citizens.

This idea surfaced when copying some cartes de visites photos (small calling card size photos which were very popular from about 1857 until 1866) of former presidents Fillmore and Johnson, and converting them to stereo cards for a collector. Wouldn't it be nice if future generations living in Columbus could see what some of the local people and sites of the 1990s looked like in 3-D, using stereo cards as the medium?

This is more than a one-person project, so I went to the Archives of the Schwob Memorial Library, at Columbus College, and explained my project to Archivist Dr. Craig Lloyd. He was quick to realize the historical potential of the project and offered to help. He also told me the Archives would be glad to serve as a repository for the stereo card collection.

Dr. Lloyd and I both made lists of possible candidates and, not surprisingly, many of the same names turned up on both lists. Dr. Lloyd's office wrote letters to everyone on the list explaining the project, the reasoning behind making the stereo cards in archival black and white, and my stereographic qualifications and interest. He informed them that I would contact them to set up appointments. Columbus College also provided a financial grant.

Future generations might be interested in some contemporary movements. Thus stereo cards depicting anti-abortion protestors at a Women's Health Organization and Habitat for Humanity Housing construction are also in the collection, which is known as the Bill C. Walton 3-D Photographic Collection. An additional title of "Personalities and Places" is on the stereo card labels.

All of the "personalities" completed a biographical sketch including their personal motto, if desired. This information was used to make the labels for the cards, and these sketches were filed in the archives with the cards.

I take a stereoscope and a half dozen stereo cards with me on every appointment so I can show them what I have in mind and what stereo cards look like. For some it is a trip down memory lane as they remember stereo cards from their childhood. It is also surprising to discover that most people don't know that stereo cards are still being produced.

The stereo cards made so far have been exposed, printed and mounted in three copies each: one for the Archives at Columbus College, one for the Oliver Wendell Holmes Stereoscopic Research Library, at Eastern College, St. David, Pennsylvania, and one for myself. The project is open-ended and additions can be made to the collection at any time.

To acquire aerial shots of Columbus and nearby Fort Benning I went to the Public Affairs Office at Fort Benning and explained the project and my need for air transportation. They coordinated with the post aviation personnel who allowed me to fly as a passenger on a scheduled helicopter training flight. The aerials make the collection more interesting.

This project has taught me more about Columbus, and about stereography. One of my subjects was in a hurry, so there was not time to get him properly "organized." He stood too far from the camera, and his image was quite small. I thought, no problem, I'll just enlarge it, crop it to the size I am using for the cards and it will work out all right. Wrong! When I enlarged the negative it brought him so far forward that he came through the stereo window--in front of the paper image when viewed through a stereoscope. He had a good laugh when he saw this and said, "My mother always hoped I would be outstanding, but I don't think this is what she had in mind." I made a couple of exposures of him sitting at his desk and they worked out just fine.

I use a Stereo Realist 1041, loaded with Plus-X film, for all the stereographs except the aerials. They were made with a motor driven Canon A-1, loaded with Tri-X, and exposures were at three frames per second. All of the negatives were developed in Micordol-X developer, using one part developer to three parts of water, to keep the grain of the film small.

The collection was displayed at the Schwob Memorial Library in the fall of 1996, using lorgnette viewers, and then placed in the Archives.

Stereo cards give the collection a realistic appearance, but normal planar photography would also be suitable for a community service project like this one. With the 21st century quickly approaching, now would be a good time for you to start such a project.

STEREO FREE VIEWING: To establish aim alignment, choose an object as far away as possible and stare at it. Leave your eyes fixed on this object. Hold the image in good light, and without moving your eyes, raise the paper slowly so that the two images are in your line of sight. Don't try to focus yet. Try to notice three figures in a row. Concentrate on the center one, disregarding the outside ones and making sure the image is not tilted. Take time, relax, be patient; your eyes are learning a new trick as they relax into the non-converging position.

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