John Plunkett

As a simple and portable lens-based device, the peepshow was one of the commonest forms of visual entertainment across nineteenth century Europe. Exhibited by a travelling showman who added verbal narrative to the images, the peepshow was used to present stories of all kinds, albeit view of foreign events and landscapes were enduringly popular. This box was one way that 19th c Europeans looked at the broader world, but it would be just as accurate to call it the box that travelled across the world. It was adapted into many diferent performance and narrative traditions. In Persian, it was called the shahre farang [‘European city’], in Arabic, the Sandook El Donya [‘box of wonders’], in pinyin it is la yang pian [‘pulled foreign pictures’], and, in India, it was reinvented through the familiar figure of the bioscopewallah. My paper will elaborate the various global forms of the peepshow as an example of transculturation: it will compare similar accounts of their appeal, design and exhibition, and reflect on the way that the device encourages a rethinking of Eurocentric accounts of 19th C media technologies and the history of immersive media. It will also reflect on shared history of peepshow and stereoscopy, and the methodological problems and opportunities deriving from researching the global history of the peepshow.

Célia Quico

Immersive representations of Portugal’s seascapes are here to be presented and analyzed, from stereoscopic photographs from early 20th century to 360o videos from early 21st century. In particular, this presentation will focus on immersive representations of Nazaré’s seascapes.

Like other Portuguese fishing communities, Nazaré has inspired the most diverse visual representations, either by painters, photographers or filmmakers. However, during the first half of the 20th century, perhaps no other photographer captured Nazaré and its inhabitants more and better than Álvaro Laborinho, photos that represent a valuable source of information about this fishing community. Álvaro Laborinho’s deep interest in the various photographic technologies and techniques led him to experiment with stereoscopic photography. Most of these images are practically unknown, either to stereoscopic photography specialists or to the general public. There are at least 40 pairs of stereoscopic photos by Álvaro Laborinho, of which 23 pairs can be categorized as Nazaré seascapes.

Today immersive media are somewhat different from these stereoscopic photos, certainly with a greater degree of technological sophistication, but probably with less durability over time given the rapid obsolescence of digital formats. Taking advantage of the wave of global interest generated by the giant waves of Praia do Norte of Nazaré, Red Bull Brasil produced and launched the 360o video “Surfing with Pedro Scooby in VR” in late 2016. Another perspective of this territory is shown in the 360o video “Nazaré, Mais que Mar é Mulher”, directed and produced by Brazilian journalist Marina Oliveto, which gathers testimonies from different generations of Nazaré women who share memories and expectations about their homeland, launched late 2019.

More than 100 years set apart Álvaro Laborinho’s stereoscopic photographs from the 360o videos produced by Red Bull Brasil and by Marina Oliveto. The same land, the same sea, but different perspectives and different degrees of immersion – literally or figuratively. In this presentation, we will then dive into these immersive representations.

Catarina Pereira

This presentation focus on retouching techniques and their use in stereoscopic dry plate negatives. Materials and techniques are reviewed in relation to non-stereoscopic portrait photography. Aurélio da Paz dos Reis’ portrait photography is less known. Here a significant contribution is thus given about his technique and the composition of portraits.

History remembers Aurélio da Paz dos Reis (1862-1931) as the father of Portuguese moving pictures. He is also known as an active politician, but his main occupation was floristry. He owned “Flora Portuense”, a flower and seeds shop located in the center of the city of Porto. He had a press pass and contributed images to periodicals such as “Illustração Portuguesa”. But, as a photographer, he considered himself an amateur and didn’t have a studio open to the public. Still, his images show good photographic quality and attention to detail. He photographed his family and friends, his travels and public events happening around him. He dedicated himself to stereoscopic photography that he published and sold with the trade name “Estereocopio Portuguez”. He improved his photography techniques by reading specific literature, contact with professional photographers and through his travels, including France and Brazil, on different occasions.

Today, at the Portuguese Center for Photography, a good part of Aurélio da Paz dos Reis’ legacy is preserved. The collection holds more than 9000 dry plate negatives, most of them stereoscopic plates. His best-known work is exterior photography focused on the moment and the movement. But the collection also holds stereoscopic portraits of celebrities, mainly actors. These are opposite to the former because noticeably, they are done with care and time, showing intention and personality, and all of them present retouchings that are absent in the rest of the collection.

These images represent the artistic society, with whom the photographer had a close relation. But they are also a testimony of the visual culture and the photographic techniques of its time, and how portrait photography and retouching always had a special place in the history of photography.

Catarina Cortes Pereira: Presently a Ph.D. student at the School of Arts, CITAR, Catholic University of Porto. She is developing a Ph.D. project on the subject of Retouched Dry Plate Photographic Negatives from different Portuguese Collections from the first half of the 20th century. With a fellow grant since 2016 from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (SFRH/BD/116315/2016). Researcher at CITAR, Escola da Artes since 2015 and at Materials Laboratory [LabMat], of the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University Complutense of Madrid. She obtained a Master’s degree in Science in Conservation by the Faculty of Science and Technology from the Nova University of Lisbon in 2013 and a Bachelor degree in Art – Conservation and Restoration at the School of the Arts at Portuguese Catholic University in Porto in 2007. Working experience includes a fellow grant in Conservation and Restoration for research and conservation and restoration work at the Laboratory HERCULES, University of Évora from 2013 to 2015. In Spain, she did did training and an internship at the Conservation and Restoration Institute of Valencia in the Documents department in 2009.