Stereoscopy: modernism and the ‘haptic’

The basic principle of stereoscopy is simple. Paired images made with a twin‐lens camera produce, when seen through a binocular stereoscope, a startling illusion of three‐dimensionality. The mind converts the flatness of the images set side by side on a piece of cardboard into depth. Stereoscopy flourished as a medium of mass‐entertainment from the 1850s through to the 1930s. The basic effect it produces, of hyper‐reality, cannot fail to enthral; the flimsier the apparatus, the duller the image viewed, the more profound the enthralment. On the whole, however, we have forgotten what it means to view or to think stereoscopically. This essay sets the experience of stereoscopy, and descriptions of it, from Baudelaire and Oliver Wendell Holmes to Proust, Joyce, and Kafka, into relation with the 'haptic' theories of cinema developed by critics such as Laura Marks and Juliana Bruno ‐ theories which themselves derive from the work of turn‐of‐the‐century art historians (Hildebrand, Riegl). It suggests that we might find a parallel for the double effect the stereoscope creates, of tableau and of tangibility, in the use of close‐ups in early films (and in particular in films whose subject matter was erotic).