The one-of-a-kind retro-tech time-travel experience you have to see to believe.
As featured in
Hold the viewer to your eyes, press the button to illuminate the vivid, full-color 3-D Kodachrome slide and be transported back in time. Discover the amazing and forgotten technology enthusiasts call “the virtual reality of the 1950s.”
Introduced in 1947, the Stereo Realist camera and viewer brought full-color 3-D photography with astonishing realism to the masses. The craze peaked in popularity in the mid-1950s — reaching hundreds of thousands of American homes — then slowly disappeared.
Emmy-winning writer Eric Drysdale has been collecting these uncanny, immersive snapshots for nearly 30 years. In this intimate salon you’ll learn about the science and history behind the technology, then see the very best of his collection in high-quality, fully-restored vintage viewers– the way they were meant to be seen.
You’ll feel almost as if you’re there (and then) as you explore every aspect of post-war American life: work and play; home and travel; city, suburb and country. It’s the closest to time travel you’re likely to experience.
In 2018, selections from Eric Drysdale’s collection of 1950s stereo photography were displayed at LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) as part of their major survey exhibit, “3D: Double Vision.” Eric also contributed an essay to the exhibition catalog.
“As you click away on your very own battery-powered, plastic time machine, you will have the rare opportunity to gaze upon hundreds of haunting and hilarious, poignant and puzzling, bleak and beautiful images. Beyond the trippy novelty of 3-D lies the heart of the event—a tour de force of curatorial passion and panache that rivals any top-shelf gallery show. If you are a lover of photography, you are in for a truly one-of-a-kind viewing experience impossible to anticipate.”
— Matt Mahurin, Photographer, illustrator and filmmaker (I Like Killing Flies)
“Eric plays the perfect tour guide, never telling you what to think or leaving you without context as you stare into the dreams and lives of a world long past. It’s how photographic history was meant to be experienced.”
