(From the book: Antonello Satta, Yosemite Valley through the stereoscope, the 1902 Underwood & Underwood Stereographs, Edizioni Archivio Stereoscopico Italiano, Padova, 2006. In the picture, the complete set of stereoscopic photographs of the Yosemite Valley, composed of 24 views and a small 70-page guide-book with a special keyed map which, for each photograph, gives the direction of view and field angle covered, all contained in a specially made box shaped to look like a book).
FROM PHOTOGRAPHY TO STEREOSCOPY
Interest in three-dimensional photography reached its apex in the period between the 19th and 20th centuries, thanks to a flourishing market in which a myriad of publishers, large and small, presented more or less rich and varied catalogues containing tens of thousands of subjects (mainly collections of enormous thematic series), to satisfy the demand for images of their increasingly avid clientèle. Stereoscopy was the culmination of a technique which originated and developed in parallel with traditional photography. [...]
YOSEMITE VALLEY IN THE UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD STEREOGRAPHS
For the first time in Italy, this volume presents photographs and texts taken from Yosemite Valley Through the Stereoscope, the first edition of which was published in 1902 by the American company Underwood & Underwood, one of the most important names in the history of stereoscopy. It is one of about three hundred sets of works published by Underwoods, mainly devoted to views of geographic locations by means of three-dimensional images. Each specially printed and boxed set contained a varying number of stereoscopic photographs, with commentaries printed on the back.
The set devoted to the Yosemite Valley is composed of 24 3D photographs, a small 70-page guide-book, and a keyed map which, for each photograph, gives the direction of view and field angle covered, according to an exclusive model patented by the publishers (see picture on page XIX).
Each 3D photograph (more correctly called “stereograph”) is presented as two apparently identical images side by side on a card. The format was very popular in the past and goes back to the second half of the 19th century, shortly after the “invention” of stereoscopy, when interest in this type of presentation vied with traditional photography, allowing considerable commercial development, with hundreds of producers and tens of thousands of titles on offer. [...]
UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD: A UNIVERSAL ENCYCLOPAEDIA IN TREE DIMENSIONS
The publishing company Underwood & Underwood, founded in 1882 by the brothers Underwood, Bert (1862-1943) and Elmer (1859-1947), was probably the most important company worldwide which specialised in stereoscopic photographs of all kinds. Before becoming well-known for this type of production, the company had begun by distributing, on a door-to-door basis, the stereographs of three other important American publishing houses, Charles Bierstadt of Niagara Falls, Littleton View Co. of Littleton (New Hampshire) and J.F. Jarvis of Washington, which, in time, were followed by others. After a few years, the Underwood brothers were so successful that, in 1891, they moved to New York and at the same time opened branches in other cities of the United States, and in Canada and Great Britain, gradually creating a network of their own photographers in many countries.
In 1895, they began to publish an enormous number of stereographs in boxes, each composed either of a few pictures, or of series on a grander scale, sometimes even exceeding 50-100 pictures, printed on albumin paper, always mounted on cardboard and in the standard format of the time (3½”x7”). Their subject matter was extensive, ranging from humorous, moral, sentimental and adventurous, to war and warfare, but the most popular views were of geographic locations, cities and countries throughout the world, all in special boxed sets made to look like books, bearing their titles in gilt letters on the spine. The boxed sets of geographic subject, which were accompanied by a guide-book and several maps, illustrating the points from which the photographs were taken and the angles of view, made up what was then called a “Stereographic Library”. [...]
YOSEMITE VALLEY FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS
Yosemite Valley is present in the collective imagination of all photographers for the extraordinary views taken of it from the 1930s by the great artist Ansel Adams (1902-1984), the most famous of all American landscape photographers.
His work, “is intensely lyrical, and its capacity of expression, although personal, maintains a constant respect for the character of the places recorded. His photographs, both when they present us with the wild yet harmonious blending of elements in the mountains, […] and when they linger on a detail, conserve the enthusiasm and zeal of those who have discovered, and wish to reveal, a world in which man can, as it were, count on an inexhaustible reserve of authenticity”.
When we see the stereoscopic images of Yosemite Valley published by Underwoods, and above all when we read the text accompanying them, by Charles Quincy Turner, we must agree that Adams’s work inherits its spirit: “One can rest content fortunately, that though it is open to the whole world to settle thereon, centuries will come and pass away, and many men may settle within the metes and bounds between us and the outer horizon, yet their presence will count for no more in these vast wilds than if they were gnats”. [...]
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