Diableries: The Complete Edition: Stereoscopic Adventures in Hell

Product Information

Once the scene had been created and photographed, the models would be broken up and used again for a different tableau.” Paula Richardson Fleming is a photographic historian with a special interest in stereo photography. She is the retired Photo Archivist of the Smithsonian Institution National Anthropological Archives, and a Fellow and former member of the Board of Directors of the National Stereoscopic Association. Her credits include publications on 19th-century photography, as well as the curation of many photographic exhibits. Her association with Brian and Denis came naturally from their mutual appreciation of Diableries. The cards are dark and devilish but also very funny, said May. “There is a wonder and magic about them. They are really and truly stereoscopic gems and the more you handle them the more astonishing they become.” I’ve looked into this theory more than once myself in the past – the theory that some Renaissance artists understood the principle of stereoscopy, and applied it in their work to make stereoscopic pairs. The sculptures are so wonderful and the compositions are so adventurous,” May tells The Post. “I love the fact that, magically, they transform when you hold them up to the light.”

The Complete Edition of the critically acclaimed, Diableries: Stereoscopic Adventures in Hell, publishes on 28th October and includes the final two cards, which after a worldwide quest Brian and his co-authors, Denis Pellerin and Paula Fleming, finally located.In the mid-1800s, a new craze based around the recently invented art of photography. Stereoscopy involved two images, printed side by side, and looked at through a special viewer. Once your eyes had adjusted – anything from a few seconds to a few minutes, depending on the individual – you would see the photograph in startling three dimensions, with depth and realism. Thus was born the intermittently popular 3D boom, one that has developed in technique and style over the subsequent two centuries, but which is essentially aimed at the same result – a sense of depth and wonder for visual images normally seen ‘flat’. Those of us over a certain age (fear not - your secret is safe with me!) will almost certainly remember the View Master: Knowing all of this (and more - there is more, but I shall forbear . . .), the book still works on the level of pure enjoyment. The 3D images are spectacular (though headache-inducing if you look for too long), and the portrayals are mostly quite fun, with a wry, dark sense of humor throughout. For those of us who are trained historians, however, the book takes on deeper social meaning in light of the fantastic historical overview and bibliographies presented at the end. This book is a keeper - one of my "chained" books that I hope to never see leave my library (NO! You can't borrow it! Rawr!) except as I share the delight I've found in this artifact with friends and family who come to visit. D photography is based on a phenomenon called Stereopsis. Stereopsis happens in everyday life when our brain fuses two slightly dissimilar (flat) pictures from two slightly different viewpoints, one from each eye, and miraculously, instantaneously, creates a solid image in our heads. The two pictures are different because our eyes, positioned a few inches apart, see slightly different amounts of an object partially hidden behind another, and slightly different views of any solid object. These differences are called parallax. Our brains cleverly interpret these parallax differences as depth information. It’s happening all the time for most of us whenever our eyes are open, without any conscious thought. The benefits of this to our survival in a predatory world must have been enormous in the evolution of our species. It gave us an instant awareness of how close any potential danger (or food source) was to us.

The cards were part of the huge craze for stereoscopyin the mid-1800s, when the Diableries were produced over a 20-year period. For more than 40 years now, Brian May has been staring into the eyes of the Devil. It all began one day in Portobello Road Market, when he was shown a piece of card on which were printed two scenes of cavorting skeletons and demons. This was his introduction to Diableries, pictures created by 19th-century French artists, showing Satan and his minions both at work and play. What made these images still more memorable was that, when viewed through a stereoscopic eyepiece, they coalesced into a three-dimensional whole. Tableaux depicting life in hell, better known as Diableries, were all the rage in nineteenth century France but over the years the stereo images made after those clay tableaux were scattered and their hidden meaning lost. When first published in 2013, this book featured all but two of the 182 scenes in the series. Remarkably, the two lost remaining views have now been found! This 2018 Complete Edition features the full compliment, to be enjoyed just as their creators intended in magnificent 3-D. In the first edition of this book, published in 2013, there were two stereo cards missing from the Diableries series! In 2018, after a worldwide search, finally the last card was found, and is published for the very first time in this new edition of Diableries, along with the story of its discovery.For his birthday, Satan gets flowers, a triumphal arch, an organ grinder, gingerbread and a freak show. Some of the flourishes, like a monogram “S” on the arch, may have been a parody of Napoleon.

You can read Carbon and Hesslinger’s entire study here. Let us know your thoughts on Leonardo’s 3D aspirations in the comments.

Word History

Satirical photos from 19th century France Images depicted in Les Diableries appear to have been inspired by medieval danse macabre imagery such as this. Unanico Group is an internationally award-winning entertainment company co-founded by Jason Jameson and Paul Laikin. Based in central London, Unanico Group has two divisions: Unanico Entertainment and Unanico Studios. The talented team of both divisions are multi-cultural and multi-lingual, and bring decades of experience in the entertainment industry to projects and partnerships.

Denis Pellerin, dedicated photohistorian, was a teacher for over 30 years and has been interested in photography since the age of ten. He was bitten by the stereo bug in the 1980's, has been fascinated by the Diableries for over 25 years and has written several books and articles on 19th-century stereophotography for various magazines, institutions and museums. He graduated as an MA in Art History at the Sorbonne in 1999 and has since been specialising in French and British Victorian genre stereoviews. He is also currently working on his PhD. Long before 3-D was forced into every movie from “Avatar” to “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs,” Victorian-era households had their own creepy 3-D fun. Later this week, May and co-authors Denis Pellerin and Paula Fleming are releasing a book about a fascinating and unusual series of stereo photographs, which were something of a phenomenon in 19th century France, and bear the wonderful name ‘Diableries’.

It’s a jolly winter scene in hell: The devil (green eyes, red coat) and his bride (blue dress) go ice skating with the dead. No snowballs, however, to be found. Some of the cards seem to suggest it is possible to have fun in the underworld with scenes of ice skating and swimming. “I think it must have been comforting for people to see people in hell enjoying themselves,” said May. May, 66, has been fascinated with Diableries since he stumbled upon one while digging through piles of junk at the Portobello Road Market in West London in the late ’60s. He asked around, but nobody knew quite what the card filled with the devil and skeletons was. Eventually, he traveled to Paris to dig for more information. These amazing and patiently restored binocular reproductions can been seen in glorious 3-D thanks to the OWL stereoscope included in the book. THE AUTHORS