Before films came into being and after still photography garnered world-wide popularity, there was a brief era when the stereoscopic image was the primary source for capturing all things exotic and lesser-known. Our featured image is a stereograph thematically appropriate for this Holiday season, titled, “Jerusalem from Mt. Scopus, Palestine,” that was produced in 1900 by Underwood & Underwood.
Underwood & Underwood were a team of two brothers from the Midwest who achieved rapid success in their stereographic business, primarily by selling their images to newspapers and magazines that wanted to replace their traditional woodcut and line-drawn illustrations to portray current events. Underwood & Underwood had their own news agency in 1904 and went on to dominate the journalistic photography field for the next thirty years.
The way in which a stereograph works is basically through “tricking” the mind into seeing two almost identical dimensional images taken on the same horizontal plane so that it produces a three-dimensional image in the device. This can also be considered a precursor to the classic red View-Master, a device which reminds us of many of our childhoods.
This image is one of millions which was produced for an eager public who had never traveled extensively before and were curious to see the natural wonders as well as war-torn geography of the world. Mount Scopus is one of the most visited and popular of the seven hills in Jerusalem, and is a Hebrew name for “mount of the spectators.” It is one of the rare spots in Jerusalem from which one may view both the Dead Sea and the Dome of the Rock.
Stacks of stereographic prints like this one were packaged within what were called stereographic tours of natural wonders, current events, religions, and culture. These boxed sets shared a common theme, like this image, which came from a matching book titled Traveling to the Holy Land. What set this brand apart from its competitors in the stereographic print market was that they would create a companion booklet as well as detailed notes on the backside of each print. These boxed sets were titled the “Underwood Travel System.” Unfortunately, as the popularity of movies ignited at the turn of the 20th Century, Underwood & Underwood stopped production of stereographs in 1920 and subsequently sold their business thereafter.
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