Using Stereoviews As Recreational Therapy In A Short-Term and Long-Term Healthcare Population  – The Stereoscopy Blog

By Andrew Lauren

Earlier this year I began volunteering at a healthcare facility that provides short-term and long-term care to its residents. On the first day I learned of a company that visited the facility and offered its residents virtual reality travel experiences as a form of recreational therapy. Recreational therapy is a healthcare practice that uses activities like games and arts & crafts to improve the physical, mental and social well-being of people with disabilities and illnesses.

While I immediately understood the benefits that the virtual reality experiences could have for this population, I also immediately thought of the travel-related stereoviews that Underwood & Underwood and the Keystone View Co. created and that my personal stereoview collection concentrates on. The stereoscopic travel experiences those companies provided were intended to provide the same kind of immersive experience as those provided by modern virtual reality companies.

This led me to wonder if the community in this healthcare facility would enjoy and benefit from a presentation involving modern and vintage stereoviews.

There were several fundamental issues I needed to work through before I could ask for permission to try this idea out.

A.  Conceptual Overview

1)  How would I approach giving my presentations?

I envisioned a fundamental departure from the individualized experience of traditional stereoscopes and VR headsets. I was not contemplating the kind of shared experience that existed in the Kaiserpanorama stereoscopic theatres nor the type of online games where a large number of people interact at the same time within the same virtual experience.

Instead, I drew inspiration from the extremely popular travel-related lectures and magic lantern slide shows that John Stoddard gave in sold out lecture tours across the United States from 1879 to 1897. Stoddard’s lectures pre-dated Underwood & Underwood’s creation of their travel-related box sets. What I wanted to do was to conduct engaging, educational and entertaining presentations based on both vintage and modern stereoviews. 

The most critical aspect to me was for my presentations to actively engage the residents of the healthcare facility instead of having them as passive listeners. I strongly believe that this kind of active and varied engagement would have therapeutic benefits for this community in a way that is distinguishable from the passive watching involved with the travel-related journeys of the virtual reality experience. I wanted to Talk WITH the residents as opposed to Talking AT them

Some might think of the Underwood & Underwood and Keystone View Company travel-related box sets as merely offering a visual gimmick for showing far away places in 3D. I see these box sets more broadly, as acting like virtual tour guides showing people far away places they may have only read about but would be unlikely to ever go to. That is why I thought they would provide a therapeutic recreation foundation for this community. These travel-related sets were far more than stereoimages. They were stereoimages accompanied by explanatory text on the front and back of the cards, companion books providing even more details of the scenes and maps showing exactly where each image was taken. I used that as a springboard to envision my presentations as exciting storytelling adventures that the residents of this healthcare facility and I would journey on together.

2)  What stereoscope would I use?

As I contemplated how to proceed I had to take into account that the residents might have impairments to their hand strength and with physical movement and coordination. 

I decided to start by using a stereoscope that was created for the project “Hidden Depths” showcasing stereoimages by Jacques Henri Lartigue. What drew me to it was its box-like Brewster stereoscope design made of translucent plastic. I felt confident that its shape and light weight would make it easier for this population to hold and to view through. Its high quality prismatic lenses would optimize the viewing experience. However, it requires cards with non-standard dimensions (6 inches by 6 inches) preventing the use of standard sized stereocards (3.5 inches by 7 inches).

3)  Original stereocards vs Restored cards vs Restored and Enhanced cards

Another issue I had to consider was what would be the nature of any vintage stereoimages I was going to show residents. The obvious option was to use original vintage stereocards. I quickly rejected that choice since I did not want to risk vintage cards getting damaged. 

A second option was to do minor restorative touch ups with no image enhancements. 

A third option was to go beyond minor restoration of the images and to do more extensive edits including:  1) window setting 2) removing stains, scratches and dust spots and 3) standard image enhancements to improve the quality of the images.

I chose the third option – to do both restoration and enhancement to vintage images. I made this choice even though I had no experience with restoration techniques and I knew I would need to take extra care to avoid introducing rivalries through mismatching restoration to the left and right images.

In making this decision I recognized that what I was doing was to prioritize the quality and enjoyability of the viewing experience of the residents in this community of these vintage images over being constrained to showing these images exactly as they now appear after the 125 to 175 years since they were made.

B.  Test Effort

I began my volunteering time as a “Friendly Visitor”. During one of those visits I brought the “Lartigue” stereoscope and some examples of my own stereoimages that would fit into it. I joined a small group of residents in a common area and showed them the stereoscope and my cards. I asked if they would like to view them. I showed them how to view the images through the stereoscope and then gave a very animated and demonstrative presentation about what the images showed and shared my stories surrounding my taking of those images. The residents were very engaged with my storytelling and enjoyed viewing the images. When the head of the Volunteers Program came by and saw the reaction of these residents, she took me to another group of residents for whom I repeated my presentation. They were equally enthusiastic and began making requests for places they would like to see stereoscopic images of. As a result of this I was asked to do regular presentations about stereoscopy for residents throughout the facility.

C.  My Presentations At The Healthcare Facility

I have given two kinds of stereoscopic-related presentations, each lasting about an hour, every two weeks at the healthcare facility. The first is an Introduction To Stereoscopy and the second is a Travel-related presentation. I begin both with an art history overview of how artists represent depth in 2 dimensional paintings and drawings. 

When I give my presentations I show my restored and enhanced versions of vintage stereocards. In this article I also show the original vintage cards.

      1)  Techniques Artists Have Used To Convey Depth      

The reason humans see depth is that the separation between our two eyes results in slightly different perspectives in what we see. However, those two images do not remain separate in our perception of them. Our brains fuse them into a single image giving us a perception of depth. 

Artists, when they paint and draw, however do not typically provide an actual way for the viewer to perceive depth. Instead, they have used a variety of techniques to convey the impression of depth in their paintings and drawings. The following are some examples.

• Big vs Small – When we see something depicted large in the foreground and something depicted small in the background of a painting/drawing we perceive it as meaning the large foreground subject is closer to us than the smaller background object. We do not interpret the below painting as suggesting that the man in the foreground is much bigger than the tree in the background.

Portrait of William Kissam Vanderbilt II (1935) by Bernard Boutet de Monvel

• Overlap – When we see something depicted in front of another object in a painting or drawing we perceive it as meaning the object in front is closer to us than the object that is getting blocked to some degree. We do not interpret the below painting as suggesting that the black horse is in some way a partial horse because the white horse is preventing us from seeing all of it.

Antique Horses Near A Gulf by Giorgio de Chirico.

• Converging lines – When we see objects that we know are parallel to each other depicted in a way that make them appear to converge (get closer) toward each other we perceive the scene as communicating that the foreground where they are farthest apart is closer than the background where they are closest together and not that they are actually getting physically closer together.

Herald Square, 1936 (After Berenice Abbott), 2013, by Don Jacot

• Box illusion – Artists have used other ways to convey depth such as the representation of a “box” below. While we perceive this image as representing a 3 dimensional box we have no confusion that it is an actual box into which we can put things.

2)  An Introduction To Stereoscopy

Charles Wheatstone And The Discovery Of Stereoscopy

In my “Introduction To Stereoscopy” presentation I use this image in my discussion of how Charles Wheatstone presented his theory of stereoscopic vision in 1838 and used drawings, not photographs, to demonstrate it. He did not use photographs as the invention of photography was first publicly announced separately a year later in 1839 by Louis Daguerre and William Fox Talbot, who had independently created unique photographic processes.

The Wet Collodion Process

I use this London Stereoscopic Company image from the mid 1850s to discuss the wet collodion process and how this stereoimage was shot sequentially (the exposure for each side taking 15 to 30 seconds). We know it was shot sequentially as the rightmost woman changed the direction she was facing for the two images. Perhaps, more remarkably, the other 3 women were able to hold their poses, without moving, for the entire time the photographer needed to shoot both images.

Stereoscopic Images Used To Show News Events

Underwood & Underwood and the Keystone View Co. were best known for the travel-related stereoviews they created. But, they also created news-related views and other kinds of thematically linked images. I use this image to illustrate the depiction of a news event in a stereocard. It shows the first full scale public demonstration the Wright brothers gave of their airplane flying.

Narrative Images

Travel-related images were not the only kinds of stereoimages sold.  Also, popular were humorous stories sometimes told through a single image or through several. These are “narrative images.”

I use this image as an example. It is titled “A Genuine Fishing Smack”, and is a comedic visual pun regarding two different meanings for the word “smack”. A “smack” is slang for a kiss. A “smack” is also a type of sailboat that was used for fishing along the coasts of Britain and the Atlantic coast of America, particularly during the 19th century.

Hand tinting

I use this image to discuss how a significant barrier to stereoscopic images being fully immersive was that they did not have color.  This shortcoming was recognized and a variety of techniques were used for the next 50 years to add color to the black and white images, such as having artists hand paint the images. For stereoscopic images this added a variable that could negatively affect the viewing experience if the artist did a poor job.

Autochromes

I use this image to discuss how in 1907 Auguste and Louis Lumière began marketing their Autochrome process for creating color images. It remained the most widely used color photography method until the mid 1930s when Kodak’s Kodachrome supplanted it.

3)  Stereoview Travel Box Sets

A second type of presentation I give concentrates on the travel-related box sets of Underwood & Underwood and the Keystone View Company.

During my presentations I emphasize the similarity between the people who viewed these images over 100 years ago and the group I’m giving my presentation to. Though the reasons why the people then could not travel to these places because of time and money are different from the health-related reasons for residents of this health-care facility the overarching similarity is that we are all seeing the world from the comfort of our homes.

There is also a connectedness that exists and a continuity I emphasize. When viewing the people and places in the stereoviews we can feel connected to them in sharing that moment in time. These views bridge geographic distance and time and their stereoscopic nature immerses us in those moments making them shared experiences.

I also emphasize that they are now part of a larger stereoscopic community that exists worldwide.

a.  Overview to Stereoview Travel

The United States of 1900 was a very different place from today. It was starting to assert itself on the world stage because of the policies of Presidents McKinley and Roosevelt.

Americans were becoming aware of far away places. But how were they seeing the places they were reading/hearing about?

• There was no internet
• There was no television
• Publicly projected moving pictures in theaters were just starting to occur
• Photography had only recently begun to see widespread use in newspapers

If Americans wanted to travel to these places their options were limited:

• There was no passenger air travel
• There were no automobiles to speak of
• If a person wanted to travel domestically it would be by foot or horse or by train.
• If a person wanted to travel overseas it would be by steamship.  Traveling to Europe took 10 days by ship….one way.  Very few people had the luxury of time and money to do that kind of travel.

There were lecturers like John Stoddard who gave travel-related presentations and slide shows that were immensely popular. But, people were dependent on the lecturer’s touring schedule, the location of the lecture and the lecturer’s choice of subject.

Underwood & Underwood had the critical insight to realize that they could fill a need by bringing the world into people’s homes in an immersive and informative way. People could view the world and learn about places wherever and whenever they wanted and with whatever subjects interested them when they were interested in them.

b.  A Sample Tour – South America

When I began discussing my idea to give presentations based on vintage travel-related box sets, several countries in South America came up in the conversations. As a result, I decided to create presentations based on the stereoview tours of the continent created by Underwood & Underwood and the Keystone View Company.

To get to South America from New York a person would have traveled by steamship and likely left from New York. The trip would have taken approximately 10 days to reach Venezuela, on the north coast of South America.

The Panama Canal would not open until 1914. So, an exploration of the continent would most likely continue by sailing along the east coast of the continent making several stops at port cities of Brazil before arriving at Buenas Aires, Argentina. At this point a traveler could continue south until the southernmost point of South America was reached, Cape Horn, and then head back north along the west coast of the continent. Alternatively, a traveler could depart from Buenos Aires and head west across Argentina until the Andes Mountains were reached. The traveler would then journey over them and arrive in Santiago, Chile and from there continue north along the western side of South America.

The fronts and backs of the stereocards often provide a great deal of material I can use during my presentations. On one of the South American cards there was a reference to Carpenter’s Geographical Reader:  South America (1899). Curious by this clear attempt to link up the stereocard to what must have been a popular geography book used in classrooms I went searching for the book. In the course of that search I learned that Frank G. Carpenter was a journalist who traveled widely around the world writing extensively about what he saw and experienced with vivid and engaging descriptions. His 6 book Geographical Reader series focuses on different parts of the world and provides a rich contemporaneous description of the travels that the Underwood & Underwood and Keystone View Company photographers would have experienced during their travels to create their travel-related stereoview box sets.

Venezuela – the following are the images I have used during the Venezuela portion of the South America tour I present at the healthcare facility.

D.  My Workflow For Restoration And Enhancement

The following outlines the workflow I currently use for scanning, restoring and enhancing vintage stereo cards for use in my presentations.

1.  Scanning

• Epson V600 scanner.
• Silver Fast software to scan.
• I put 11 pounds of hand weights on the scanner top.  That is enough to flatten the cards but not make them flat. This then triggers the need to use StereoPhoto Maker (SPM) to compensate for the remaining resulting distortion of the image.
• Scan stereocard at 1200 dpi.

2.  Restoration and Enhancement

• Step 1: Straighten the Scanned Stereocard in Photoshop and Save the file.
• Step 2: Crop the Left, Right and Bottom of the Card so that only the stereo pair remain and the arched top of the card which I remove later.
• Step 3: Open this cropped image in Stereophoto Maker. 
  • Align the image.
  • Set the Window.
  • Use SPM’s Clone Tool to remove glaring rivalries – the areas where restoration is most likely noticeably needed (particularly the sky).
  • Color Match – often this is insufficient to correct the amount of color mismatch that can exist between the left and right halves of a vintage stereo pair.  As a result, using the clone tool to heal rivalries will produce color mismatches within the healed half.
  • Most minor rivalries I address within Lightroom using its Clone tool sampling within the same side not the other half.
  • Save the image.
• Step 4: Open the stereo pair in Lightroom. 
  • Convert image to Black & White.
  • Do Global Adjustments.
  • Spot healing using its Clone Tool
  • I often need to create a Sky Layer Mask which I use to deal with flaws in the image there such as scratches, dust spots and stains.
  • Save the image
• Step 5 – Open the image in InDesign within a template I have created to make a modern stereocard version of the vintage card.
  • Apply a graphic arch shape layer I created to return an even arch shape to the top of the stereo pair that is lost when SPM aligned the stereo pair.

E.  Meet Them Where They Are At

Deciding on how I would do my presentations and choosing images to use were important preparatory steps but they only brought me to the starting line. I now had to give my presentations in front of real people and that would be the true test of my ideas and preparation. Napoleon had a saying that stressed the importance of being able to adapt plans made before battle to the realities that occurred during the actual battle. The fundamentals of my approach have been successful but I have found it important to be nimble and flexible in adapting them when I give my presentations.

Why is that? When I entered the building to give my first presentation I had known I would give my presentation in a common area on a specific floor near the elevators serving the building. Not surprisingly those areas have a steady flow of people coming through them as people arrive on, or depart from, the floor or are traveling from one part of the floor to another. Those areas are well lit but not brightly lit. However, I did not know who would attend my presentation nor how many. 

I have now given many presentations at this healthcare facility on different floors and my audiences have varied in size from 5 to 15 people with sometimes family members attending too. As residents of a short-term and long-term care facility they have varying degrees of physical impairment.  Some of those attending my presentations have also exhibited varying degrees of cognitive impairment. I never know, until I actually begin my presentations, what my audience’s physical and cognitive circumstances are and what adaptations I will need to make to my presentations as I am giving them.

I’ve also observed that some of the residents attending my presentations have vision impairments. This has led me to a greater awareness that age-related vision changes may exist that might impede an individual’s ability to view stereoimages.

My choice of the Lartigue stereoscope, while successful for its ease of the residents to hold, results in inefficiencies in the flow of my presentations and with time-management. I own only one of them, and it has to be passed around to the group for each stereoimage I am showing. To remedy this I considered converting my presentations to be stereo projections. But, after much consideration and research, I eventually rejected that approach as impractical for this setting and audience.

When Underwood & Underwood began selling their travel-related stereoview box sets around 1900 the average life expectancy in the United States was 47. It is now 79. While people remain healthier to a much more advanced age now than in 1900 not everyone is so fortunate. With the health impediments present at this healthcare facility, physical and cognitive, the stereoimage viewing context is quite different from the idealized “There’s No Place Like Home” scene from around 1900 I showed earlier.

It is important to stress that “different” does NOT mean “impossible” nor “insurmountable.” What I do is embodied in the expression “meeting someone where they are at.” Doing so ensures the dignity of each person and recognizes that each person is an individual who is more than their current situation in a healthcare facility and whatever health circumstances they are dealing with.

What does this mean regarding my presentations? Most fundamentally, it means that “meeting the residents where they are at” in the context of stereoscopy does not require their ability to view images in 3D. That is part of the journey not a necessary final destination.

My first priority is to ensure that my presentations are interesting and entertaining for the residents attending them. To do so, I move around my audience making a point to speak to each person and make eye contact while doing so. I incorporate them and our setting to illustrate the points I am making. I also strive to be attentive to the physical and cognitive capabilities of my audience and adapt my presentations accordingly. I make a point of avoiding giving “professorial” lectures from behind a lectern.

The adaptation I have made to how I do my presentations is to hold off doing the stereoscope viewing portion until the end. The images are viewed without the stereoscope as 2D images during my presentations. This has improved the efficiency of my presentation while giving each resident more time and less pressure later to view the images through the stereoscope and hopefully increase the likelihood of success in viewing the image in 3D. This has also allowed me to now use the London Stereoscopic Company’s OWL stereoscope designed by Brian May and standard sized stereocards.

The immersiveness of the travel-related stereocards created by Underwood & Underwood were not a narrowly defined experience of 3D viewing. The travel-related box sets provided a comprehensive and curated travel experience as if conducted by an individual’s personal tour guide. They provided an itinerary for exploring far away places with images, explanations, stories, history and context for how they related to the viewer as well as maps to better understand what was shown. The immersiveness of the travel experience was not reliant on being able to view the images in 3D. Doing so was not the goal but an enhancement to the journey. 

The material and itinerary created for the box sets forms the foundation of my presentations. My storytelling skills allow my audience to feel transported to those far away places and moments in time beyond what the box sets raw material can do. For my audience, whose health circumstances have led them to live within this healthcare facility, my ability to engage them and transport them in this journey in space and time has had clear benefits for them. Viewing the images in 3D becomes an enhancement to our trip not a indicator of its success or our enjoyment. 

In my most recent presentations I have used Frank Carpenter’s vivid and engaging descriptions of his journeys to the places I’m showing to make that far away time of traveling more real for my audience. One of the strongest reactions I have gotten was my sharing his need to pack his own saddle for the trip in anticipation of having to travel by mule during his trip!

My greatest measure of the therapeutic benefit of my presentations for this community are the stories the residents share with me. I have had a resident who was already familiar with stereoscopy as her husband used to shoot stereoscopic images and gave slideshow presentations of them to family and friends. My presentation brought back happy memories for her. Another resident stayed long after my presentation to discuss with it with me and his familiarity with the places I had shown. Another resident recalled childhood memories of seeing stereoimages in a penny arcade viewer like Whiting’s Sculptoscope. Still others fondly recalled ViewMasters. And many others were fascinated by the images I showed and the stories I shared that were related to them. 

As happy as I am when I feel my presentations have gone well my most satisfying experience is when residents ask me when I’m coming back to give another presentation about stereoscopy. My audience are in the midst of difficult life circumstances and I feel deep satisfaction and happiness that I provide an oasis of joy for them.

Andrew Lauren

Acknowledgments

I feel a tremendous amount of gratitude to several people who provided me with the generosity of their time, insights and encouragement. First and foremost I thank Rebecca Sharpe who, at the very outset of my forming this idea that stereoscopy might have therapeutic benefits for this healthcare community, provided irreplaceable support for me to pursue this and for encouraging me to write this article so that I might share with others my experiences and what I’ve learned. 

The start of any new journey benefits from having an experienced and knowledgeable guide. This was particularly true for me at the start of this journey where so much was Terra Incognita. For me, I truly Stand On The Shoulders Of Giants and am deeply appreciative to Denis Pellerin for sharing with me his encouragement and support for this project and his invaluable insights.

I am extraordinarily fortunate to have friends like Diego Ruiz, Gary Dineen, Ismael Amazvica, Dave Comeau and Anna Ivanova who I am able to turn to for their knowledge, insights, feedback and support.  The work I am doing has benefitted immensely from them and our conversations.

I am very appreciative of Bernadette Hughes for her insights regarding the ease of using and viewing through a variety of stereoscopes. 

Words cannot begin to describe the extent of how much MaryAnn Davidock’s support, patience, being an enthusiastic sounding board of my ideas and excellent proofreading skills mean to me.

Lastly, I dedicate this article to my parents, Paul and Edith Lauren. Throughout my life they encouraged my curiosity and interests. I would not be the person I am were it not for that nor would I have achieved whatever success I have had without that at its foundation. They did not live to see this latest adventure I’ve embarked on but I believe it would have made them the most proud of me.

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