See Animal Specimens in Stereoscopic 3D Photos

They sit in the storage rooms of grand museums, guarded remains of once-living creatures now frozen in time. They almost seem alive, skeleton frames posing behind a plate a glass: The spider monkey looks impish; the Atlantic Octopus enlarges in rage; the Juvenile Chimpanzee hunches over like an old man; while the Leafy Sea Dragon coyly flaunts its fins.

“It’s interesting how skeletons and specimens in fluid can retain or reflect a character,” photographer Jim Naughten tells TIME.
Naughten’s Animal Kingdom, currently on show at Klompching Gallery in New York, has been described as an attempt to reanimate history. Through stereoscopy—a technique developed in the 1800s to create the illusion of viewing images in three dimensions—viewers explore images of Victorian and Edwardian Natural History specimens as if looking through a microscope.

Courtesy Klompching Gallery

Naughten discovered stereoscopic photography while researching a World War I project. “I was instantly smitten,” he says. “It was extraordinarily profound to be able to witness three dimensional impression of a war which took place a hundred years ago in this way. I wanted to see if it was possible to make stereo prints, and then set about finding a subject that I wanted to explore that would suit the treatment. The natural history specimens were perfect.”
He spent a year in the archive rooms of the Grant Museum of Zoology, Oxford Museum of Natural His...

Source: TIME: Top Science and Health Stories - May 3, 2016 Category: Science Authors: Rachel Lowry Tags: Uncategorized 3D Jim Naughten Lightbox On Our Radar photography stereographs zoological specimen Source Type: news