Diableries: Stereoscopic Adventures in Hell
FromJacket Copy: Books, Authors and all things BookishThe devil was close at hand in Victorian-era France, particularly if you had a stereoscope. A series of double-image cards,Diableriesfit into a wooden viewer and leaped into 3-D, with witty, racy, frightening visions of hell. One hundred and eighty images are collected in the new bookDiableries: Stereoscopic Adventures in Hell, which comes with a sixteen layer lenticular fronted slipcase and a fold-out stereoscope viewer. The book is written by Brian May, the Queen guitarist,(who has a doctorate in astrophysics and is a life long stereo photography collector), Denis Pellerin and Paula Fleming. It contains detailed context for eachDiablerie, explaining political references, pointing out jokes and illustrating technical accomplishments. The images were created by photographing hand-sculpted scenes. They look sepia-toned in daylight and fill with color when backlighted, which is particularly frightening when the eyes of the damned glow red as the green devil parades by.Los Angeles TimesOctober 23, 2013 --Los Angeles TimesWho says dinosaur rockers can't raise hell? In the poshly publishedDiableries; (London Stereopticon Company, 280 pages, $60), Brian May, lead guitarist of Queen, shares his longstanding passion for 19th-century stereopticon images he bought his first pair of these 3-D cards over 40 years ago from a psychedelia vendor at Portobello Road Market in London. In this nearly complete set of a phantasmic French stereopticon series from the 1860s, skeletons enact an elaborate danse macabre curiously, Satan bears a striking resemblance to King Louis Philippe in a fiery underworld, prefiguring the aesthetic of many an album cover. When viewed through the nifty folding stereoscope enclosed in the book's slipcase, the paired images merge to reveal rounded volumes and a sense of deep, measurable space. --Wall Street JournalHoliday Gift GuideNovember 23, 2013