Well, here’s another ‘secret’ project coming out of the cupboard ! PICASSO in 3-D !
A few months ago, a publishing company asked my advice on some newly rediscovered 3-D photos of Pablo Picasso. The pictures were plainly priceless, probably the only 3-D photos of Picasso in existence, showing him in a true ‘snapshot’ of his life at home and with friends around 1957. The pictures are a very exciting glimpse of the man and his work behind the scenes – lots to enjoy. The part I liked least was his attendance at a bullfight, but it’s hard to be judgmental about a man like this, and especially at this distance. It was more than made up for by the colourful and truly stereoscopic story that the pictures tell. The slides had been made on colour transparency film many years ago, and were covered in scratches and dust, subject to fogging and fading, and had mostly suffered from under-exposure in the first place. They also needed aligning for comfortable stereo viewing, and some were, compositionally, not really viewable with comfort at all.
Of course this is just the kind of challenge that grabs me, so I offered to fix them up for nothing. I applied the procedures and tricks that I know, and after yards of dogged repetitive determination, removing the flaws, I’m quite proud of how they came out. The thousands of hours I’ve spent restoring 1850s stereo cards probably helped. I guess, really, I plunged into ‘rescuing’ them because I didn’t want anyone else to do it, in case they messed them up ! So, over a few weeks, restoring every possible detail of these images became one more labour of love for me, in spare moments.
Well, the book, with all those rejuvenated 3-D slides, is now coming out. And it’s linked to a new Picasso exhibition at the Holburne Museum in Bath. You’ll be able to buy the book there, but also we’ll be selling a limited number of copies on our LondonStereo.com website. It comes with one of my patent-app-for OWL stereo viewers !
More details soon, but here’s a taster … I particularly liked this one of Pablo in his ‘natural habitat’, caught in a thoughtful moment.
WHAT WAS HE THINKING ?
If you want to tell me, we’ll give away a 3-D Picasso book to the author of the best answer. OK ? {Answers to brianmay.com@clara.co.uk}
The Guardian have written up the gist of what is going on – link below. Most of it’s substantially correct, but I feel obliged to point out that I’m NOT the Chairman of the Stereoscopic Society ! That honour is held by Andrew Hurst, who will be lecturing on 3-D at the museum about a month from now.
Bri
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