Saturday, June 26, 2010

Whitman teaching aid: Brooklyn Ferry in 3D

First published in 1865 by Edward and H. T. Anthony in their collection Anthony's Instantaneous Views, this stereopticon card is downloadable from the museum of photography at George Eastman House, http://geh.org. It bears the luminous title
"Ferry Boat Running to Atlantic Street, Brooklyn."

Click to enlarge.

When I teach Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, students are impressed by the news that Whitman was back in Brooklyn in 1865, and so he might (who knows?) have been on this boat at the very instant one of the Anthony brothers framed his view and then squeezed the shutter release bulb. 

Who was to know what should come home to me?
Who knows but I am enjoying this?
Who knows, for all the distance, but I am as good as looking at you now, for all you cannot see me?

However, you'll need a stereo viewer to make the picture reach off the page and grab you the way Whitman does. So here (with thanks to Georges Rosset for his freeware program Z-Anaglyph) is a convenient, Net-friendly, anaglyphic version. To enter the depths of the image, just commandeer the nearest kid's red-and-blue cellophane glasses.