These photos of
a lar gibbon skeleton were taken at London’s Grant Museum of Zoology – from
locations 6.4 centimetres apart. Unfocus your eyes until the images overlap,
and they may fuse, allowing you to see the gibbon in 3D. You may also feel that
the skeleton is moving: the ribcage seems to belly out, the stance becomes
lifelike. You might even get the sense that you are looking out of someone
else’s eyes – unless your eyes are exactly 6.4 centimetres apart, that is.
This sense of
presence, of witnessing a moment, stereograms portray animals preserved by Victorian collectors. The effect of
looking at a stereoscopic image is magical and transformative. For those who
struggle to fuse the images, help is at hand. Visitors to Naughten’s show
Animal Kingdoms, will be handed special stereoscopic viewers (see photo). A
book of images, complete with stereoscopic glasses, is in production.
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