Jose Antonio Hernandéz Latas

Researcher at the foundation Agencia Aragonesa para la Investigación y el Desarrollo (ARAID) at the University of Zaragoza. Doctor of Art History (2002), he has also been a research fellow of the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Academy of Spain in Rome (1996) and researcher of the Ramón y Cajal Program in the Higher School of Architecture at the University of Alcalá de Henares (2003-2008). Since 2008 he has been accredited by ANECA as University Professor and in 2010 he obtained the Favorable Certification of the I3 Program, granted by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. Exhibition curator and author of numerous books and articles, he dedicates his research work to the recovery, study and appreciation of the historical photographic heritage (1839-1939).

Piedra Monastery (Saragossa) in commercial stereoscopic photography, 19th and 20th centuries

The Cistercian Piedra Monastery and its landscape are currently one of the most important tourist assets in the province of Zaragoza, in Spain. After its confiscation between 1835 and 1837, its subsequent conversion into a guesthouse attracted numerous and illustrious visitors, as well as painters and photographers, throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Since then, the picturesque beauty of the Piedra River waterfalls generated the production and commercialization of numerous albums and collections of photographic views. Among the formats sold with greatest success, stand out the series of stereoscopic photographs, made and put on sale, from the 1860s, by prestigious photographers such as Jean Laurent, Mariano Júdez or, by the beginning of the 20th century, by the firms Fernández and González, Sociedad Estereoscópica Española, Rellev and El Turismo Práctico. The commercial success of stereoscopic photography was such that this format survived commercially until the 1950s and 1960s, the era of plastic, with two collections of 3-D color slides about the monastery, marketed by the companies Arpa Color S.A. and Stereofilm, respectively.