The Stereograph Collection at Kyoto University

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    During the first half of the 20th century, many stereographs were purchased by, or donated to, the Department of Geography, Faculty of Letters, Kyoto University. The collection contains 245 stereographs still stored at the Department of Geography. The collection depicts scenic views and historical sites in Europe and North America. The images are valuable visual materials for academic research on photographic technology and techniques, geography, royal palaces, theater, tourism, landscapes, and world’s fairs in the modern era. In spring 2019, the stereograph collection stored at Kyoto University was released on the digital archive.

 

    These stereographs are one example of the various materials that have been collected by the Department over the years. The materials include postcards of Japanese landscapes and historical sites; foreign souvenir albums; photographic plates for screening; movie films for magic lanterns; relief maps; photographs of physical landscapes, historical sites, and field trips. All these items were important for geographical education at the beginning of the 20th century, when lively visual teaching materials, especially materials displaying foreign landscapes and cultural objects, were not easy to obtain.

 

    Stereographs are interesting for more than just their contents. They are both media presenting images and tools for producing realistic images. The biggest difference from other visual materials is that they provide users with three-dimensional images.

 

    Most stereographs are thought to have been purchased by the Department, although documents indicating purchase routes and prices have not yet been found. Of course, someone might have donated the stereographs to the Department.

 

    Our stereograph collection project to build the digital archive began in the spring of 2014. Two educational assistants from Kyoto University Museum, Kogachi Ryo and Yamamoto Hiroshi, organized the stereographs, compiled a list of the available bibliographic information, scanned the images, and stored them in special boxes made of neutral paper. In April 2018, Tanimoto Ryo, a doctoral student and a research assistant of the Department of Geography, began designing the digital archive to be user-friendly, and completed it for publication. Nakata Shiori, an assistant from Kyoto University Museum, also helped our project. I wish to extend my heartfelt thanks to these assistants for their contribution.

 

    The archive includes twelve galleries and a list of all the stereograph titles with their bibliographic information. The stereographs are classified–mainly by places of Paris (four galleries), Auvergne, Toulon, London, Vienna, Venice & Rome, and Niagara Falls into ten galleries. The eleventh gallery contains the stereographs depicting many places unable to be identified. The twelfth gallery shows animated images of five selected stereographs from other eleven galleries. On the digital archive, placing the cursor on a stereograph displays its title, and clicking on a stereograph opens a page that contains an enlarged image of the item and its bibliographical information. The animation presentation of Gallery 12 was Tanimoto’s idea to improve the stereoscopic vision using planer photographs. This uniqueness of Gallery 12 makes our digital archive quite different from many other stereograph collections available online.

 

    Our next three missions are to identify all available bibliographic information, clarify the socioeconomic and cultural background of the creation, and improve the technique of presenting the stereographs to viewers in three-dimensional images. Further help and information from viewers is most welcome.

 

    The purpose of releasing our Stereograph Collection Archive is to allow the public, including researchers and students, to use the results obtained in our project beginning in 2014 to conduct academic research, or even observations out of intellectual curiosity, about antique stereographs produced prior to the 20th century.

 

March 2019

                                                                                                                                                 Tanaka Kazuko

                                                                                                                                                 Department of Geography

                                                                                                                                                 Graduate School of Letters