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Most of us visualize the U.S. Civil War through  black
and white pictures and few of us realize that it was photographed in 3D! That’s right, nearly 150 years ago, 3D photography was the most popular type of photography. Known as “stereoviews”, “stereocards” or “stereographs” was a triumph of early photography that continued in popularity for decades. Look at the images at the top of the page. All of them are part of a 3D photograph.
Our reproduction stereoviews are far superior to the few others available. After printing, each image is professionally mounted onto standard 'Holmes' size stereo card measuring 3 ½" x 7". Each card uses a matte board the to produce a durable card nearly identical to the original cards. Other reproduction cards are printed on a slightly heavy paper on a home printer and do not have the image quality of professional photo paper, or the "feel" of a commercially mounted card. We pride ourselves in trying to recreate the original card with the best modern technology.
Our customers know this:
"The most beautiful reproduction stereoview I have ever seen.”
“...in a word AWESOME! It really is better than I expected (if that's possible)."
“Absolutely Amazing Cards”
“Very nice repo, very clean, clear w/beautiful color. A real pleasure ! ! ! ! ! !”,
“Thanks for a really neat item at a great price.”,
“Expertly restored, pristine image. Very pleased.”
“Fine picture as always, Fast, safe delivery.”
This collection comes directly from the archives of the Library of Congress. Each image was scanned from the original negative and then carefully restored and colored. The color has been added to these photographs to help recreate, as close as possible, the original scene as it may have appeared on the day it was taken. We have tried to make the images as realistic as possible. While some of that is open to interpretation, a great amount of research has been done to come as close as possible to what the original scene may have looked like.
Hand coloring of images is a technique that dates to the very beginning of photography. During the Civil War images were hand colored and tinted. The early attempts are crude and quality varies, but the desire for color images was there from the beginning. There are many examples of period stereo view cards that were colored.
Currently we are in the process of restoring selected images. This painstaking work takes countless hours to achieve. While we do not plan to restore all of the more than 2,000 3D images from the Civil War, we do hope to have restored a significant selection that represents both the time and era that was the Civil War.
We hope that you enjoy reviewing the images and return to see how our collection grows.
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