About me

I start­ed my stereo­scop­ic jour­ney in late 2016 soon after I spot­ted a small hand­held card­board view­er of the French brand Brugière from around 1940 with a bunch of films on a local antiques mar­ket. At home I remem­bered a View­mas­ter that my par­ents had bought dur­ing our hol­i­days in Cal­i­for­nia and what joy it had brought to me as a child. Upon doing fur­ther research, I soon found the same Brugière view­er for a take­away price on a local adver­tise­ment web­site. This lit­tle view­er sparked my interest.

Not much lat­er I had dis­cov­ered that there was a broad field that was called stere­oscopy. My first col­lec­tor’s item was a French Tax­iphote. It’s the left-most stereo view­er on the pho­to above.

While expand­ing my area of inter­est and adding more items to my lit­tle col­lec­tion I also won­dered if it would be pos­si­ble to make stereo pho­tos with a mod­ern cam­era. I had absolute­ly no clue that there is an active com­mu­ni­ty of mod­ern stereo pho­tog­ra­phers. But once I reac­ti­vat­ed my old Insta­gram account, the next chap­ter of my stereo jour­ney start­ed imme­di­ate­ly. You can read about my cur­rent stan­dard work­flow for tak­ing stereo pho­tos here.

So far, my col­lec­tion includes dozens of wood­en view­ers, both hand­held and table­top, some­times with their stor­age fur­ni­ture, cam­eras and devel­op­ing tools as well as his­toric doc­u­ments like cat­a­logues and thou­sands of stereo views. I also start­ed restor­ing view­ers that are in a bad con­di­tion includ­ing com­plete dis­as­sem­bling, clean­ing, replac­ing, repair­ing, adjust­ing and so on. Bring­ing back the orig­i­nal beau­ty to a view­er or cam­era that was long for­got­ten in an attic or base­ment is a real­ly joy­ful experience.

I soon came to the point where I had to set bor­ders to my col­lect­ing activ­i­ties. So at the moment I am lim­it­ed to glass slides, their spe­cif­ic view­ers and the time before 1945. So my col­lec­tion remains one-sided despite its diver­si­ty but this is also a kind of focus.

Besides my col­lect­ing craze I also got more and more involved in the present stereo com­mu­ni­ty. A cru­cial expe­ri­ence was the 2019 ISU con­gress in Lübeck, Ger­many. I built my own stereo rig and got much input from long term stereo pho­tog­ra­phers. Insta­gram became my main chan­nel to share my own stereo pho­tos and chat with oth­er stereo pho­tog­ra­phers. In 2020, I got involved in the Vir­tu­al Stereo­scop­ic Com­mu­ni­ty.

I always enjoy meet­ing oth­er stereo enthu­si­asts and learn­ing some­thing new. It’s there­fore a nat­ur­al choice to include guest authors on this web­site to share their knowl­edge, trea­sures and pho­tos. So don’t hes­i­tate to get in touch by e‑mail to pascal@stereosite.com if you’d like to share any­thing stereo­scop­ic here. Final­ly, I wel­come your feed­back to help me improve the Stereosite.

Pas­cal Martiné

Mainz, Ger­many

Insta­gram-pro­file: pm.stereophotos