Diableries: The Complete Edition: Stereoscopic Adventures in Hell

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Les Diableries is the title of a series of stereoscopic photographs published in Paris during the 1860s. [1] The photographs, commonly known as stereoviews, portray sculpted clay vignettes which depict scenes of daily life in Hell. Much of the subject matter was satirical and mirrored the corruption and excess of Paris during the Second Empire. Napoleon III's authoritarian rule was repeatedly the subject of criticism, as was the decadent lifestyle of the bourgeoisie. [2] Creation and publication [ edit ] Calling them “high art,” Mays says, “I think they are absolutely saturated with, not only beauty and invention, but meaning as well.” In the mid-1800s, a new craze based around the recently invented art of photography. Stereoscopy involved two images, printed side by side, and looked at through a special viewer. Once your eyes had adjusted – anything from a few seconds to a few minutes, depending on the individual – you would see the photograph in startling three dimensions, with depth and realism. Thus was born the intermittently popular 3D boom, one that has developed in technique and style over the subsequent two centuries, but which is essentially aimed at the same result – a sense of depth and wonder for visual images normally seen ‘flat’.

There is no question that these 150-year-old works were meant as more than just a mild diversion or entertainment. Physically, too, there was more to them than met the eye: lay them flat on a table and they appear monochrome, but lift them up to the light and the colour floods in. Emeralds sparkle, faces flush pink, and the eyes of the devils take on a sinister, ruby-red gleam.Among the guests at the Hotel de Sully on November 25th will be descendants of Diableries sculptor Habert, along with the curator of the cemetery where the remains of the other sculptor, Hennetier, are buried. Thanks to M. Pellerin’s researches and the Diableries book finally bringing recognition to Hennetier’s genius, his bones are no longer under threat of being disturbed. May, 66, has been fascinated with Diableries since he stumbled upon one while digging through piles of junk at the Portobello Road Market in West London in the late ’60s. He asked around, but nobody knew quite what the card filled with the devil and skeletons was. Eventually, he traveled to Paris to dig for more information. Diableries - Stereoscopic Adventures In Hell' was published on 31 October 2013, and was written by Brian May, Denis Pellerin and Paula Fleming.

D photography is based on a phenomenon called Stereopsis. Stereopsis happens in everyday life when our brain fuses two slightly dissimilar (flat) pictures from two slightly different viewpoints, one from each eye, and miraculously, instantaneously, creates a solid image in our heads. The two pictures are different because our eyes, positioned a few inches apart, see slightly different amounts of an object partially hidden behind another, and slightly different views of any solid object. These differences are called parallax. Our brains cleverly interpret these parallax differences as depth information. It’s happening all the time for most of us whenever our eyes are open, without any conscious thought. The benefits of this to our survival in a predatory world must have been enormous in the evolution of our species. It gave us an instant awareness of how close any potential danger (or food source) was to us. Intrigued, Carbon and Hesslinger decided to calculate the positions the painter (or painters) would have taken to create each “Mona Lisa” version. They found that the horizontal difference between the two paintings was about 2.7 inches, which happens to be very close to the average distance between a person’s eyes. Denis Pellerin, passionate historian of stereoscopy, was a teacher for 30 years. He wrote several books on 19th century stereo photography and has been fascinated by the Diableries for over a quarter of a century.For one day only, Soho’s Century Club will be transformed into a gothic Victorian crypt of temptation and seduction. Whilst surrounded by fantastic imagery depicting demonic scenes with carousing skeletons, devils and satyrs, you will have the opportunity to see the Diableries stories come to life in 3-D using Brian May’s stereoscopic viewer which he designed in the shape of an Owl and named just that. I’ve looked into this theory more than once myself in the past – the theory that some Renaissance artists understood the principle of stereoscopy, and applied it in their work to make stereoscopic pairs.

You can read Carbon and Hesslinger’s entire study here. Let us know your thoughts on Leonardo’s 3D aspirations in the comments. Whether it’s a horse race, a bicycle race or a card game, he always wins,” says May. But there was a political as well as a moral purpose. “These images became an opportunity for artists to express sedition. You get scenes, for example, in which Napoleon III is subtly portrayed as the Devil. Quite, often, artists got thrown into jail if they produced work which displeased the powers that be.” These amazing and patiently restored binocular reproductions can been seen in glorious 3-D thanks to the OWL stereoscope included in the book. THE AUTHORS Brian May is one of the world’s foremost collectors of Victorian stereo cards. He published his first book about these cards in 2009. 'A Village Lost And Found' contained a complete series of stereo cards taken in a small Oxfordshire village, and was a huge success and the subject of a great deal of media attention. In France, around 1860, from the loins of a traditional national fascination with all things diabolical, was born a new sensation – a series of visionary dioramas depicting life in a strange parallel universe called ENFER – Hell – communicated to an eager audience by means of stereoscopic cards, to be viewed in the stereoscopes which had already become popular in the 1850s. This 3-D phenomenon, which fascinated a nation for 40 years, is yours to share.

Similarly, Carbon and Hesslinger surmise that the two perspectives used in the Louvre and Prado “Mona Lisas” could amount to one 3D image. Place the visual information together, and you have a stereoscopic masterpiece. Brian May, astronomer and Queen guitarist, is also a passionate and knowledgeable collector of Victorian photography—and in particular, of 3D (stereoscopic) photography. The Complete Edition of the critically acclaimed, Diableries: Stereoscopic Adventures in Hell, publishes on 28th October and includes the final two cards, which after a worldwide quest Brian and his co-authors, Denis Pellerin and Paula Fleming, finally located.