About Lenticular (3D) Photographs
This article was originally in the For The Curious column of Snapshot, the project b Newsletter by Barbara Levine
Recently I've seen contemporary lenticular versions of vintage photos. The Getty Museum, for example, sells a super cool lenticular postcard of a Muybridge Animals in Motion Study photograph. If you are not familiar with the term 'lenticular' think of those thick plastic colorful 3D-like postcards (often with nature or religious scenes). Above is an example, c.1920 of a photograph made into a lenticular novelty item. When you look at the image from different angles the woman's eyes and mouth open and close.
The lenticular process was introduced by a French painter, G. A. Bois-Clair, in 1692. Generally speaking, his idea was to divide two or more pictures into "stripes" and align them behind a series of vertically aligned "opaque bars" of the same frequency (the photo above for example has a piece of striped paper behind it). As a viewer walked by his paintings, they would appear to change from one picture to another. In 1896, the technique was applied to photography and the Vari Vue company (famous for its 1950s flicker rings and hypnotic discs) now makes software so you too can make lenticular 3D photographs. Visit the curiosities section of project b to see more examples of vintage lenticular photographs including the Photochange Post Card, patented in 1906.