One of the ongoing Stereo-History/Cultural Heritage projects the PARALLAX-SHIFT Stereo Club is undertaking is documenting and promoting the Chester Burger stereo slide collection which is housed between the NYPL and NYHS. The collection is practically unknown to the outside world and is obviously incredibly important as the collection is housed between two of the most prestigious institutions of history and public education in NYC.
They serve as an absolutely unparalleled stereoscopic document of world history between 1950-1988.
This collection is practically undocumented, I am aware of a single article that was published in Stereo World magazine that makes mention of it, which was published upon its acceptance into the shared collections of the institutions. Barring that, the only information I have unearthed was found by inquiring on the photo 3D board, Chester Burger was known by a few individuals who remembered his work through the stereo slide portfolios which would make physical rounds. Beyond that, both Chester Burger (who is an American HERO and was the world’s first television newscaster among other notable achievements) and his personal stereo slide collection documented at news worthy events throughout his lifetime are practically unknown.
Documenting and cataloging the stereo images in the collection proved to be an incredibly challenging undertaking as the stereo slides are obviously not part of the lending catalog of either institution so there is no opportunity to properly scan these slides as they cannot be removed from the rooms they are cataloged at. We may have an “in” in regards to the slides housed at the NYHS as P-SSC treasurer Sam Dole’s father, famed photographer Jody Dole, currently owns and operates an art conservation business called Cultural Preservation Technologies and is friends with a member on their board of directors.
The NYPL of course does not outsource digitizing/conservation/preservation work so we had to devise methods for capturing this historic collection in house with limited options for their actual digitization, with hopes our efforts might attract the attention of library personnel to focus on digitizing this monumental collection themselves.
We have been focusing on capturing images utilizing the tools and equipment for stereo slide viewing that are allowed with us in the library, namely through capturing L & R image views through the respective left and right eye viewports in a battery operated stereo slide viewer. This method was proving to be too challenging to line up and capture with smartphones as it is a pretty cumbersome and clunky undertaking.
We needed to devise a new method for easy digital capturing that would be permitted within the research room at the NYPL. As luck would have it, that method fell into my lap last month during a visit to the Penumbra Foundation, which is PARALLAX-SHIFT’s home away from home. Geoffrey the director at Penumbra, gave me a Process Prism Copy Lens for my birthday out of a junk pile he had no use for. At the last XLCR 3D meeting we had, I tested it out and it seems to work quite well for capturing the entire stereo slide as well as left and right image close ups for the image transparencies.
The only real post editing I will have to do is flip the images as they are reversed via mirror and that is an easy enough edit to batch out en mass.
Not bad eh? This will at least enable us to get a feel and report back on exactly WHAT images are cataloged at the NYPL and NYHS and be able to share them- digitized with an acceptable enough result- with the world for everyone to see.
I am also looking into a smartphone copy stand with illuminated bottom panel at Negativesupply.com but in the meanwhile, this will do. I’ve already made an appointment for this coming Saturday to visit the stereo slide collection at the special research dept and will have the prism all cleaned up and ready to go along with a few homemade stereo slide jigs i created for repetitive capturing 🙂
ALL PARALLAX-SHIFT Stereo Club members are welcome to borrow the prism at any time as this is a group effort spearheaded by club secretary Carlos Becerra. The collection is 15,000 stereo slides at the NYPL of worldwide events and the 5000 images specifically on New York are housed at the NYHS.
Keep your eyes on theSHIFT, we will be reporting back on our findings and interviewing archivists on proper stereo slide storage, etc.
Thanks for reading!
–ilicia
PARALLAX-SHIFT 