3D: Double Vision

This book traces the rise of the 3D spectacle, from 19th-century stereoscopy to contemporary 3D filmmaking and artworks.

This book follows the cyclical development of 3D media from the 1830s to the present, tracing an alternate history of modernism in which virtual depth takes precedence over material flatness. Pursuing a career-long obsession, author Britt Salvesen explores the origins of the stereoscope and its impact on later artists, featuring historic images by Jules Duboscq, Marcel Duchamp, Oskar Fischinger, Salvador Dali, and others. She traces the origins of anaglyph and polarized film, as well as other 3D formats, such as View-Master, Stereo Realist, lenticular printing, computer animation, and holography. Readers learn how 3D techniques were adopted by such artists as Simone Forti, Dan Graham, Mariko Mori, William Kentridge, Trisha Baga, and Lucy Raven. Encompassing nearly 200 years of innovation and covering a wide range of genres, artists, and media — from sophisticated perceptual experimentation to popular cinema — this volume explores how and why 3D images remain wondrous to 21st-century artists and audiences. Each book includes 3D viewing apparatuses to allow readers to fully engage in this multi-dimensional history of artistic expression.

About the author:

Britt Salvesen is Curator and Head of the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department and the Prints and Drawings Department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.