The Frozen Past: Available in 3D

"Royal Gardens, Dresden, Germany." Undated.

Long before our recent 3D movie craze (before movies, for that matter) people enjoyed the simple magic of stereoscopic photography. Why look at a flat photo when you can leap right into a three-dimensional freeze frame? I picked up the photos in this post at a used book store few years ago and I've been meaning to post them for a while. They show images from around the world taken around the late nineteenth to early twentieth century. If you're into stereoscopy, I also highly recommend Clicksy Pics. The site's owner takes images like these seemingly still, dead photographs and breathes incredible life into them through animated gifs. I would not, however, recommend them to anyone suffering from epilepsy or susceptible to motion sickness. They're intense, though perhaps not quite Avatar intense.

"The Sad Roll Call after some of the British were cut off at Dordrecht (Dec. 30th), S.A." 2nd Boer War, South Africa, 1899. Published by Underwood & Underwood, 1900.

"Spanish prisoners freed by the Americans on the capture of Imus,--Las Pinas, Philippines." Spanish American War, 1898-1899. Published by Underwood & Underwood, 1899.

"Street Scene, Cairo, Egypt." Undated.

"The Stadium, Rome." Undated.

"Garden of Gethsemane. Palestine." Undated.

"Off for Porto Rico." Undated (Spanish American War?)

"A Public Well, Pekin, China." Undated.