A FORGOTTEN PIONEER of STEREOGRAPHY 1850s
T.R. Williams’ stereographs taken of scenes in an English village in the 1850s (“Scenes in Our Village”) have been reproduced by Brian May and Elena Vidal in a superb publication, “A Village Lost and Found” . The book comes in a slip case that includes a stereoscopic viewer invented by Brian May “which makes the magic happen“.
In these videos, Brian May and Elena Vidal explain the history and principles of stereography, and the inception of their book.
“You can find some grubby old card in an auction house … and suddenly you can walk into another world.“
EXTRACTS from “A Village Lost and Found” The London Stereoscopic Society 2009
THOMAS NEVIN’S STEREOGRAPHS 1860s
T.J. Nevin printed his stereographs using the same card frame, and the same type of photographer’s blind impress stamp evident in T.R. Williams’ work, suggesting direct knowledge of Williams as a pioneer of the science and art.
More than fifty stereographs by T. Nevin held at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery – many depicting scenes of Augusta, the village at Kangaroo Valley (now Lenah Valley, Hobart) where the Nevin family resided on land adjoining the Lady Franklin Museum – reflect similar thematic conventions in T.R. Williams’ original “Scenes in Our Village” in which short poems were written to accompany each . Thomas Nevin’s father, John Nevin, published a poem in 1868 about the cottage he built at Kangaroo Valley, and his son Thomas Nevin produced an accompanying photograph of the cottage. And like T.R. Williams who was largely forgotten until Brian May’s publication, scant attention had been paid to Thomas J. Nevin until the appearance of this blog and its associated sites.
