0.3 Strategies and resources for studying stereographs

Although many in the nineteenth century believed that photographs mirrored reality, images exist withinspecific cultural, aesthetic, and historical contexts. The photographer makes a number of choices, such as what subject tophotograph, what point of view to adopt, and what to include and what to leave out. As Graham Clarke argues,“Whenever we look at a photographic image we engage in a series of complex readings whichrelate as much to the expectations and assumptions that we bring to the image as the photographic subject itself. Indeed, rather thanthe notion of looking, which suggests a passive act of recognition, we need to insist that we read a photograph, not as an image but asa text. That reading (any reading) involves a series of problematic, ambiguous, and often contradictory meanings andrelationships between the reader and the image”(27). Reading photographs and stereographs thus requires an active process ofasking questions about how the image is composed and what it signifies.

Whether you are studying the history of photography or depictions of Egyptian daily life by Europeans,stereographs can furnish an important source of evidence for research projects. Social historians can use stereographs to studyeverything from tourism to social attitudes toward women to representations of warfare and disasters. For example, one couldask how women are portrayed in the photos—are they participating in the activities or simply observers? Important to the history ofphotography, stereographs reflect changing manufacturing and distribution processes. We can also approach stereographs asaesthetic objects, studying their composition, use of shadow and light, perspective, shape, and so forth. What angle you plan totake for your research project will determine the questions that you ask. Below are some possible directions that a research projectusing stereographs from the TIMEA project could take. Although the stereographs themselves are an important starting point forresearch, you can enrich your project by also examining other sources, including primary sources such as letters, books, andnewspaper articles and secondary sources such as scholarly books and articles.

Research questions

• Who produced the stereographs? Why were they produced? How were they produced? What is there to know about these companies?Their photographers? Were they involved with the Egyptian government, the British, or local tour guides?
• What technologies were used to make and distribute stereographs? How did those technologies change?
• Who used stereographs? Why? What did they make of them? Where and how were the images marketed and to whom?
• What kinds of scenes are represented? What are the themes of the images? Why were these particular places so important to thephotographer, publisher and consumer?
• How were social customs such as the funeral processions, bazaars, and street scenes understood by the viewers (primarilyEuropeans and Americans)?
• How do the images relate to narrative accounts of travel in Egypt (also found in TIMEA )?
• How is the image framed? What do you think is taking place outside of the frame of the image?
• How does the photographer use elements such as light, shapes and perspective?
• What effect did the marketing of 3-D Egypt have on tourism, in particular spots like, say, the Giza pyramids?
• How are human subjects depicted? How are they dressed? Are they posed? What kind of expressions do they have?
• What conclusions can you reach by the choice of subjects and how they are photographed?
• What are the significant details in the image?
• Compare several stereographs. Do you notice any patterns in how they are photographed and what details they include?
• What was the significance of being able to see an image in three dimensions? Did viewers think that such images were more“real”?
• What does the interest in stereographs say about the viewers?