Is there a nerdier branch of photography than stereo photography? (Yes, almost certainly.) Our interest, as a family, goes back a year or so to when we were clearing out Linda’s dad’s room at the assisted living facility. (He’s not dead, he just needed to move to a different room.) In the back of his closet we found a metal case filed with stereo slides and a vintage Kodak viewer from the late 1950s. We brought it home and were immediately captivated by the immediacy of those Kodachrome slides featuring images of Linda’s family life from the late 1950s and early 1960s. For all of our technology, it’s hard to think of anything contemporary that’s as compelling.

It was only a matter of days before I’d bought the matching Kodak Stereo Camera. I still haven’t ventured into slide film with it yet, but I have now done both color negative and black and white. If you click on any of the following, you can get the discrete “light box” image. Try to “free view” them. It’s hard to explain, but if you just kind of stare through them, you can get the effect without a viewer. Or, if you prefer, you can click on the link below each image to download a printable version. The print should 7″ across and it will fit into a standard, circa 1900 stereo viewer.

These are CC-Attribution-Noncommercial.