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Victor Flores

ULHT - Universidade Lusofona de Humanidades e Tecnologias, ECATI - Escola de Comunicação, Artes e Tecnologias da Informação, Faculty Member

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Victor Flores is an Associate Professor and Head of the PhD Program in Media Arts and Communication at Lusofona University, in Lisbon. He is the founding organizer of the ‘International Conference on Stereo & Immersive Media: Photography, Sound and Cinema Research’, and the principal editor of the ‘International Journal on Stereo & Immersive Media’. He is currently the Principal Investigator of the research projects ‘Curiositas: Peeping Before Virtual Reality. A Media Archaeology of Immersion Through VR and the Iberian Cosmoramas’ (FCT) and ‘Decolonising the Panorama of Congo: A Virtual Heritage Artistic Research’ (H2020). Between 2018 and 2021 he organised and curated the 'Catalogue Raisonné of Carlos Relvas's Stereoscopic Photography', an online searchable database that allows the first comprehensive presentation of Carlos Relvas's stereoscopic prints and negatives from 1862 to 1874 (https://carlosrelvascatalogue.pt). In 2020 he has joined the administration board of the ‘Fundación para la Difusión de la Fotografía y Estereoscopía Histórica FBS’ in Madrid.

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Universidade do Minho

Ludimilla Carvalho Wanderlei

Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)

Claudia LAMBACH

Université Paris III - Sorbonne Nouvelle

Universidade de Brasília - UnB

Claudio Abraão Filho

Faculdade Casper Líbero

Juliana Gontijo

UERJ - Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro / Rio de Janeiro State University

Eduardo Escarpinelli

Eduardo Luersen

Universität Konstanz

Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo

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Papers by Victor Flores

O «pós-fotográfico» nas artes tecnológicas

Escultura digital: para uma nova declinação da matéria e do tacto

Caleidoscopio Revista De Comunicacao E Cultura, 2001

Immersion and Expanded Spectatorships: Notes on a Reinvented Field

Aniki: Revista Portuguesa da Imagem em Movimento

The special section “Immersion and expanded spectatorships” discusses how moving images have been... more The special section “Immersion and expanded spectatorships” discusses how moving images have been intensely reinvented in recent virtual environments, promoting renewed forms of viewing that change and broaden the spectator’s experience. Engaging with the fact that the history of immersive media is often difficult to reconstruct and categorize clearly, the four essays here gathered reflect precisely such plurality of research lines. Simultaneously, they further demonstrate how this field has for long been shaped — and continues to be so — in a hybrid manner, through fruitful dialogues and mutual contamination.

Ruídos do fotográfico no imaginário digital

Comunicação e Sociedade, 2012

Este ensaio debruça-se sobre a cultura do fotográfico que as imagens técnicas vieram desenvolver,... more Este ensaio debruça-se sobre a cultura do fotográfico que as imagens técnicas vieram desenvolver, visando, em particular, o modo influente pelo qual essa cultura criou fortes paradoxos na actual evolução da imagem digital. Um desses paradoxos mais “visíveis” prende-se com a convocação por parte das actuais práticas da imagem digital de ruídos e distorções visuais próprios ao regime visual anterior, o analógico. Este facto, que muito nos diz sobre a actual cultura visual, deve antes de mais permitir-nos questionar sobre o peso que a qualidade da imagem (ou seja, a sua nitidez e definição) teve na emergência e aceitação social de cada novo medium visual. Em segundo lugar, irá permitir-nos avaliar o peso dos ruídos visuais na cultura do fotográfico, assim como na sua respectiva incorporação pela cultura digital e pelas suas diferentes interfaces. Tal como sucedeu no projecto visual moderno, os ideais de semelhança, transparência e nitidez convivem hoje tranquilamente com ruídos próprio...

Wet Collodion and a pair of lenses. Carlos Relvas's stereoscopic photography: the digital reunion of negatives and prints

The beginning the photographic activity of Carlos Relvas (1838-1894) is closely connected to ster... more The beginning the photographic activity of Carlos Relvas (1838-1894) is closely connected to stereoscopic photography. This fact has not always been quite clear since Carlos Relvas’s stereoviews have remained one of the least known sides of his photographic work. The dispersion of his stereo cards among several public and private collections, as well as the long period of inaccessibility to his archive of negatives, hindered the perception of the meaningful work that Carlos Relvas carried out in the production of stereoscopic views of Portugal. One of the main challenges of the 21st-century studies of photography lies in the opportunity to publish online images from early photography collections. Digital media can enhance these collections and expand their reading. Among the main beneficiaries will be photographic negatives, which will gain new heuristic importance in this new environment of mediations. That was our intuition by developing a digital catalogue for the collections of ...

The Metrics of Landscape. Stereo fieldwork by Francisco Afonso Chaves and other Portuguese Explorers

Artnodes, 2018

Although the invention of the stereoscope in 1832 shed new light on the anomalies of vision and o... more Although the invention of the stereoscope in 1832 shed new light on the anomalies of vision and on the constructive role of the mind in visual perception, this became no obstacle to its scientific uses throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. On the contrary, combined with photography, the stereoscope embodied both the imperialist politics of the 19th century and its scientific ideology. These pairs of twin images perfected photography as an accurate and credible scientific instrument and gave explorers the chance to map, calculate and “grab the world in an image”. The use of stereo photography in geodesic and topographic fieldworks is one of the best evidences of such scientific practices, largely overlooked by stereo photography studies. Here, we introduce the stereoviews by Portuguese explorers such as Francisco Afonso Chaves, an early-20th-century Azorean naturalist, and analyse a particular series of Verascope glass plates which represent theodolites photographed during his fiel...

The animation of the photographic: stereoscopy and cinema. The experiments of Aurélio da Paz dos Reis

Early Popular Visual Culture, 2016

Cinema was born in a visual culture where stereoscopy played a crucial role. In this paper, I wil... more Cinema was born in a visual culture where stereoscopy played a crucial role. In this paper, I will discuss how stereoscopy and cinema derived from a common programme caused by photography that brought images and life closer, boosting an unseen period of mergers and experiments in the history of the image. The project of moving images was also a stereoscopic project. To animate the images in relief was one of the main challenges of the realism desired by nineteenth-century visual culture. In particular, I will reflect on the stereoscopic photography of Aurélio da Paz dos Reis, his cinematic experiments, the major discourses that followed and the ‘archive fever’ that hit it. Furthermore, I will consider the specificities of stereoscopy as a personal, as opposed to communal, medium and technique. I also argue that if the nineteenth-century stereo visual culture has anticipated our current personal media age, the unstable presence of stereoscopy in the twentieth-century mass media culture becomes an understandable and inevitable phenomenon.

Involuntary pseudos. The untransposed stereos in the digital archives

Archiving Conference, 2019

Digitizing stereo photographs can bring back to museums and archives some of the challenges that ... more Digitizing stereo photographs can bring back to museums and archives some of the challenges that early photographers had to deal with. When digitizing the original negative plates in wet collodion or in gelatin silver, the protocol followed for stereos is apparently the same as for mono photography. As a result, archives are presenting to their public and researchers files with untransposed left and right images of each stereo pair. In other words, wrong or 'pseudo views' are being uploaded daily in institutional websites and databases, adding an extra layer of difficulty for the presentation and viewing of some historical gems of western visual culture. This problem was first noticed during a research project dedicated to Portuguese stereo photography which has catalogued thirty one collections of stereo photography, consisting of mainly negatives. Forgotten or neglected media can contribute to the knowledge of current media. Such is the leit-motiv of the recent field of studies named media archaeology (Huhtamo and Parikka, 2011). In the history of photography there is a technique called 'stereoscopy' which was forgotten and largely neglected, and that could contribute to our understanding of current immersive environments of virtual reality. This was the motivation for a research project dedicated to the study of Portuguese stereo photography, which was undertaken between 2013 and 2016. Since there had been no previous studies in this field in Portugal, this project aimed at identifying and cataloguing thirty one public collections of stereo photography in nine different archives and museums. A total of 11.453 images were studied and uploaded in a database, offering us a representative view over the Portuguese Stereo Visual Culture (the title of our project) from the 1860's to the 1920's .

Victor Flores The Lens and the Burin Initial steps towards recognition for the Photography of Carlos Relvas

Carlos Relvas (1838-1894)— Rediscovered Views of Portugal, 2019

Victor Flores A Lente e o Buril Transferencias Os Primeiros Passos da Fotografia de Carlos Relvas

Carlos Relvas 1838-1894. Vistas Inéditas de Portugal , 2019

Questões emergentes das actuais negociações entre as crenças da imagem analógica e da imagemdigital

O espaco re-apresenta-se hoje como uma das principais forcas da mobilizacao politica das civiliza... more O espaco re-apresenta-se hoje como uma das principais forcas da mobilizacao politica das civilizacoes. A sua percepcao e fixacao dependem muito de imagens e modos de ver que tanto o captavam como o estendiam infinitamente. O surgimento da fotografia fazia emergir a promessa da sua delimitacao mas tambem o da sua refracao e desterritorializacao. Partindo de concepcoes e teorias do espaco e da experiencia de autores como Michael Foucalt, Edward T. Hall e Vilem Flusser, procura-se articular a forma como a tecnologia fotografica contribuiu para convencoes e perspectivas de um espaco subjectivado e apolitico que preparou o terreno para a firmacao de espacos virtuais, leves e nao concretos, onde parecem vir a centrar-se os principais eixos da experiencia do seculo XXI.

Stereo Visual Culture

The International Journal of the Image, 2013

Carlos Relvas’s Stereoscopic Photography: The Digital Reunion of Negatives and Prints

History of Photography

European stereoscopic photography owes a significant part of its cultural specificity to amateur ... more European stereoscopic photography owes a significant part of its cultural specificity to amateur photographers who resorted to the wet collodion process to document nature with reduced exposure times and to perfect their photographic art with crisper and more detailed images. The Portuguese Carlos Relvas (1838–94) was one of these renowned collodion practitioners. Until recently, most of his stereoscopic collections remained undigitised and unstudied, and the contribution of stereoscopy to the launch of his international career was little known. The building of an online catalogue raisonné dedicated to Relvas’s stereoscopic photography has been an opportunity to undertake a combined study of his stereoscopic negatives and prints, making it possible to retrieve new information about the extent, importance and evolution of his stereoscopic work. While designed to make these collections digitally available, the catalogue offers a new perspective on the specific value of stereoscopic negatives and cross-referenced ‘image families’ for a new understanding of photographic practice. By re-examining the opportunities offered by digital collections, this article sheds light on their potential to remodel the memory and historic value of a nineteenth-century photographer and, in particular, to properly showcase stereoscopic photography.

Ruídos do Fotográfico no Imaginário Digital

Revista Comunicação e Sociedade , 2010

Este ensaio debruça-se sobre a cultura do fotográfico que as imagens técnicas vieram desenvolver,... more Este ensaio debruça-se sobre a cultura do fotográfico que as imagens técnicas vieram desenvolver, visando, em particular, o modo influente pelo qual essa cultura criou fortes paradoxos na actual evolução da imagem digital. Um desses paradoxos mais «visíveis» prende-se com a convocação por parte das actuais práticas da imagem digital de ruídos e distorções visuais próprios ao regime visual anterior, o analógico. Este facto, que muito nos diz sobre a actual cultura visual, deve antes de mais permitir-nos questionar sobre o peso que a qualidade da imagem (ou seja, a sua nitidez e definição) teve na emergência e aceitação social de cada novo medium visual. Em segundo lugar, irá permitir-nos avaliar o peso dos ruídos visuais na cultura do fotográfico, assim como na sua respectiva incorporação pela cultura digital e pelas suas diferentes interfaces. Tal como sucedeu no projecto visual moderno, os ideais de semelhança, transparência e nitidez convivem hoje tranquilamente com ruídos próprios ao «fotográfico», dando conta de como uma cultura visual das lentes continua a interferir no actual imaginário digital, e, desta vez, não por razões técnicas mas sim retóricas.

The Haptic Interface of 'The Flea' from 'Nos Mondaines'

The Third Image. Stereo Photography in Portugal , 2019

Some would say without hesitation that intimacy is inherent to stereoscopy. Particularly because ... more Some would say without hesitation that intimacy is inherent to stereoscopy. Particularly because stereoscopy is the device par excellence of approach, and of the loss of distances: it amplifies images and brings us near its objects, hence available to the eye and to its very close and detailed viewing. Stereoscopy isolates the observer from the rest of the world, through a viewer, transforming him into a voyeur that is easily
absorbed by the sensuality of the relief. It is therefore not surprising that intimacy has emerged as one of the main themes of the stereoscopic photography.

A Interface Háptica de 'A Pulga' de Nos Mondaines

A Terceira Imagem. A Fotografia Estereoscópica em Portugal, 2019

Dir-se-á sem hesitações que a intimidade é inerente à estereoscopia. Desde logo porque a estereos... more Dir-se-á sem hesitações que a intimidade é inerente à estereoscopia. Desde logo porque a estereoscopia é o dispositivo por excelência da aproximação, da perda das distâncias: amplia as imagens e aproxima-nos dos seus objectos, doravante à disposição do olhar e das suas muito próximas e minuciosas inspecções. Através de um visor a estereoscopia isola o observador do seu mundo e transforma-o num voyeur que facilmente se deixa absorver pela sensualidade do relevo. Não será por isso de estranhar que a intimidade tenha emergido como um dos principais temas da fotografia estereoscópica.

Involuntary Pseudos. The Untransposed Stereos in The Digital Archives

Archiving Proceedings, 2019

Digitizing stereo photographs can bring back to museums and archives some of the challenges that ... more Digitizing stereo photographs can bring back to museums and archives some of the challenges that early photographers had to deal with. When digitizing the original negative plates in wet collodion or in gelatin silver, the protocol followed for stereos is apparently the same as for mono photography. As a result, archives are presenting to their public and researchers files with untransposed left and right images of each stereo pair. In other words, wrong or 'pseudo views' are being uploaded daily in institutional websites and databases, adding an extra layer of difficulty for the presentation and viewing of some historical gems of western visual culture. This problem was first noticed during a research project dedicated to Portuguese stereo photography which has catalogued thirty one collections of stereo photography, consisting of mainly negatives.

The Animation of The Photographic: Stereoscopy and Cinema. The Experiments of Aurélio da Paz dos Reis

Early Popular Visual Culture, 2016

Cinema was born in a visual culture where stereoscopy played a crucial role. In this paper, we wi... more Cinema was born in a visual culture where stereoscopy played a crucial role. In this paper, we will discuss how stereoscopy and cinema derived from a common programme caused by photography that brought images and life closer, boosting an unseen period of mergers and experiments in the history of the image. The project of moving images was also a stereoscopic project. To animate the images in relief was one of the main challenges of the realism desired by nineteenth-century visual culture. In particular, I will reflect on the stereoscopic photography by Aurélio da Paz dos Reis, his cinematic experiments, the major discourses that followed and the ‘archive fever’ that hit it. Furthermore, I will consider the specificities of stereoscopy as a personal, as opposed to communal, medium and technique. I also argue that if the nineteenth-century stereo visual culture has anticipated our current personal media age, the unstable presence of stereoscopy in the twentieth-century mass media culture becomes an understandable and inevitable phenomenon.

The Metrics of Landscape. Stereo Fieldwork by Francisco Afonso Chaves and Other Portuguese Explorers

Artnodes. E-Journal on Art, Science and Technology, 2018

Although the invention of the stereoscope in 1832 shed new light on the anomalies of vision and o... more Although the invention of the stereoscope in 1832 shed new light on the anomalies of vision and on the constructive role of the mind in visual perception, this became no obstacle to its scientific uses throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. On the contrary, combined with photography, the stereoscope embodied both the imperialist politics of the 19th century and its scientific ideology. These pairs of twin images perfected photography as an accurate and credible scientific instrument and gave explorers the chance to map, calculate and "grab the world in an image". The use of stereo photography in geodesic and topographic fieldworks is one of the best evidences of such scientific practices, largely overlooked by stereo photography studies. Here, we introduce the stereoviews by Portuguese explorers such as Francisco Afonso Chaves, an early-20th-century Azorean naturalist, and analyse a particular series of Verascope glass plates which represent theodolites photographed during his fieldwork. The identification of Recommended citation Flores, Victor. 2018. "The metrics of landscape. Stereo fieldwork by Francisco Afonso Chaves and other Portuguese explorers". In Pau Alsina, Ana Rodríguez and Vanina Y. Hofman (coords.). "Media Archaeology". Artnodes. No. 21: 99-108. UOC [Accessed: dd/mm/yy] http://dx.

2.0 Post-Screen Condition

Unspoken Dialogues. Post-Screen Festival, 2016

The idea of a post-screen era seems to suggest a historic moment when images begin to detach them... more The idea of a post-screen era seems to suggest a historic moment when images begin to detach themselves from screens and migrate to other surfaces. Today, this idea represents a challenge to civilization: not so much because those 'other surfaces' do not exist or are not being tested out , but because screens have incorporated our spaces, our imaginations and many of our social practices. Doing without them could easily be seen as a kind of threat, especially since screens are synonymous with the everyday, with access to information, to work and leisure, to the point where we count on them to touch and interact in the world. And so it has been, gradually, since shadow theaters and magic lantern shows, from cinema and television, right up to multiple and mobile screens of varying formats that make up our current media culture.

O «pós-fotográfico» nas artes tecnológicas

Escultura digital: para uma nova declinação da matéria e do tacto

Caleidoscopio Revista De Comunicacao E Cultura, 2001

Immersion and Expanded Spectatorships: Notes on a Reinvented Field

Aniki: Revista Portuguesa da Imagem em Movimento

The special section “Immersion and expanded spectatorships” discusses how moving images have been... more The special section “Immersion and expanded spectatorships” discusses how moving images have been intensely reinvented in recent virtual environments, promoting renewed forms of viewing that change and broaden the spectator’s experience. Engaging with the fact that the history of immersive media is often difficult to reconstruct and categorize clearly, the four essays here gathered reflect precisely such plurality of research lines. Simultaneously, they further demonstrate how this field has for long been shaped — and continues to be so — in a hybrid manner, through fruitful dialogues and mutual contamination.

Ruídos do fotográfico no imaginário digital

Comunicação e Sociedade, 2012

Este ensaio debruça-se sobre a cultura do fotográfico que as imagens técnicas vieram desenvolver,... more Este ensaio debruça-se sobre a cultura do fotográfico que as imagens técnicas vieram desenvolver, visando, em particular, o modo influente pelo qual essa cultura criou fortes paradoxos na actual evolução da imagem digital. Um desses paradoxos mais “visíveis” prende-se com a convocação por parte das actuais práticas da imagem digital de ruídos e distorções visuais próprios ao regime visual anterior, o analógico. Este facto, que muito nos diz sobre a actual cultura visual, deve antes de mais permitir-nos questionar sobre o peso que a qualidade da imagem (ou seja, a sua nitidez e definição) teve na emergência e aceitação social de cada novo medium visual. Em segundo lugar, irá permitir-nos avaliar o peso dos ruídos visuais na cultura do fotográfico, assim como na sua respectiva incorporação pela cultura digital e pelas suas diferentes interfaces. Tal como sucedeu no projecto visual moderno, os ideais de semelhança, transparência e nitidez convivem hoje tranquilamente com ruídos próprio...

Wet Collodion and a pair of lenses. Carlos Relvas's stereoscopic photography: the digital reunion of negatives and prints

The beginning the photographic activity of Carlos Relvas (1838-1894) is closely connected to ster... more The beginning the photographic activity of Carlos Relvas (1838-1894) is closely connected to stereoscopic photography. This fact has not always been quite clear since Carlos Relvas’s stereoviews have remained one of the least known sides of his photographic work. The dispersion of his stereo cards among several public and private collections, as well as the long period of inaccessibility to his archive of negatives, hindered the perception of the meaningful work that Carlos Relvas carried out in the production of stereoscopic views of Portugal. One of the main challenges of the 21st-century studies of photography lies in the opportunity to publish online images from early photography collections. Digital media can enhance these collections and expand their reading. Among the main beneficiaries will be photographic negatives, which will gain new heuristic importance in this new environment of mediations. That was our intuition by developing a digital catalogue for the collections of ...

The Metrics of Landscape. Stereo fieldwork by Francisco Afonso Chaves and other Portuguese Explorers

Artnodes, 2018

Although the invention of the stereoscope in 1832 shed new light on the anomalies of vision and o... more Although the invention of the stereoscope in 1832 shed new light on the anomalies of vision and on the constructive role of the mind in visual perception, this became no obstacle to its scientific uses throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. On the contrary, combined with photography, the stereoscope embodied both the imperialist politics of the 19th century and its scientific ideology. These pairs of twin images perfected photography as an accurate and credible scientific instrument and gave explorers the chance to map, calculate and “grab the world in an image”. The use of stereo photography in geodesic and topographic fieldworks is one of the best evidences of such scientific practices, largely overlooked by stereo photography studies. Here, we introduce the stereoviews by Portuguese explorers such as Francisco Afonso Chaves, an early-20th-century Azorean naturalist, and analyse a particular series of Verascope glass plates which represent theodolites photographed during his fiel...

The animation of the photographic: stereoscopy and cinema. The experiments of Aurélio da Paz dos Reis

Early Popular Visual Culture, 2016

Cinema was born in a visual culture where stereoscopy played a crucial role. In this paper, I wil... more Cinema was born in a visual culture where stereoscopy played a crucial role. In this paper, I will discuss how stereoscopy and cinema derived from a common programme caused by photography that brought images and life closer, boosting an unseen period of mergers and experiments in the history of the image. The project of moving images was also a stereoscopic project. To animate the images in relief was one of the main challenges of the realism desired by nineteenth-century visual culture. In particular, I will reflect on the stereoscopic photography of Aurélio da Paz dos Reis, his cinematic experiments, the major discourses that followed and the ‘archive fever’ that hit it. Furthermore, I will consider the specificities of stereoscopy as a personal, as opposed to communal, medium and technique. I also argue that if the nineteenth-century stereo visual culture has anticipated our current personal media age, the unstable presence of stereoscopy in the twentieth-century mass media culture becomes an understandable and inevitable phenomenon.

Involuntary pseudos. The untransposed stereos in the digital archives

Archiving Conference, 2019

Digitizing stereo photographs can bring back to museums and archives some of the challenges that ... more Digitizing stereo photographs can bring back to museums and archives some of the challenges that early photographers had to deal with. When digitizing the original negative plates in wet collodion or in gelatin silver, the protocol followed for stereos is apparently the same as for mono photography. As a result, archives are presenting to their public and researchers files with untransposed left and right images of each stereo pair. In other words, wrong or 'pseudo views' are being uploaded daily in institutional websites and databases, adding an extra layer of difficulty for the presentation and viewing of some historical gems of western visual culture. This problem was first noticed during a research project dedicated to Portuguese stereo photography which has catalogued thirty one collections of stereo photography, consisting of mainly negatives. Forgotten or neglected media can contribute to the knowledge of current media. Such is the leit-motiv of the recent field of studies named media archaeology (Huhtamo and Parikka, 2011). In the history of photography there is a technique called 'stereoscopy' which was forgotten and largely neglected, and that could contribute to our understanding of current immersive environments of virtual reality. This was the motivation for a research project dedicated to the study of Portuguese stereo photography, which was undertaken between 2013 and 2016. Since there had been no previous studies in this field in Portugal, this project aimed at identifying and cataloguing thirty one public collections of stereo photography in nine different archives and museums. A total of 11.453 images were studied and uploaded in a database, offering us a representative view over the Portuguese Stereo Visual Culture (the title of our project) from the 1860's to the 1920's .

Victor Flores The Lens and the Burin Initial steps towards recognition for the Photography of Carlos Relvas

Carlos Relvas (1838-1894)— Rediscovered Views of Portugal, 2019

Victor Flores A Lente e o Buril Transferencias Os Primeiros Passos da Fotografia de Carlos Relvas

Carlos Relvas 1838-1894. Vistas Inéditas de Portugal , 2019

Questões emergentes das actuais negociações entre as crenças da imagem analógica e da imagemdigital

O espaco re-apresenta-se hoje como uma das principais forcas da mobilizacao politica das civiliza... more O espaco re-apresenta-se hoje como uma das principais forcas da mobilizacao politica das civilizacoes. A sua percepcao e fixacao dependem muito de imagens e modos de ver que tanto o captavam como o estendiam infinitamente. O surgimento da fotografia fazia emergir a promessa da sua delimitacao mas tambem o da sua refracao e desterritorializacao. Partindo de concepcoes e teorias do espaco e da experiencia de autores como Michael Foucalt, Edward T. Hall e Vilem Flusser, procura-se articular a forma como a tecnologia fotografica contribuiu para convencoes e perspectivas de um espaco subjectivado e apolitico que preparou o terreno para a firmacao de espacos virtuais, leves e nao concretos, onde parecem vir a centrar-se os principais eixos da experiencia do seculo XXI.

Stereo Visual Culture

The International Journal of the Image, 2013

Carlos Relvas’s Stereoscopic Photography: The Digital Reunion of Negatives and Prints

History of Photography

European stereoscopic photography owes a significant part of its cultural specificity to amateur ... more European stereoscopic photography owes a significant part of its cultural specificity to amateur photographers who resorted to the wet collodion process to document nature with reduced exposure times and to perfect their photographic art with crisper and more detailed images. The Portuguese Carlos Relvas (1838–94) was one of these renowned collodion practitioners. Until recently, most of his stereoscopic collections remained undigitised and unstudied, and the contribution of stereoscopy to the launch of his international career was little known. The building of an online catalogue raisonné dedicated to Relvas’s stereoscopic photography has been an opportunity to undertake a combined study of his stereoscopic negatives and prints, making it possible to retrieve new information about the extent, importance and evolution of his stereoscopic work. While designed to make these collections digitally available, the catalogue offers a new perspective on the specific value of stereoscopic negatives and cross-referenced ‘image families’ for a new understanding of photographic practice. By re-examining the opportunities offered by digital collections, this article sheds light on their potential to remodel the memory and historic value of a nineteenth-century photographer and, in particular, to properly showcase stereoscopic photography.

Ruídos do Fotográfico no Imaginário Digital

Revista Comunicação e Sociedade , 2010

Este ensaio debruça-se sobre a cultura do fotográfico que as imagens técnicas vieram desenvolver,... more Este ensaio debruça-se sobre a cultura do fotográfico que as imagens técnicas vieram desenvolver, visando, em particular, o modo influente pelo qual essa cultura criou fortes paradoxos na actual evolução da imagem digital. Um desses paradoxos mais «visíveis» prende-se com a convocação por parte das actuais práticas da imagem digital de ruídos e distorções visuais próprios ao regime visual anterior, o analógico. Este facto, que muito nos diz sobre a actual cultura visual, deve antes de mais permitir-nos questionar sobre o peso que a qualidade da imagem (ou seja, a sua nitidez e definição) teve na emergência e aceitação social de cada novo medium visual. Em segundo lugar, irá permitir-nos avaliar o peso dos ruídos visuais na cultura do fotográfico, assim como na sua respectiva incorporação pela cultura digital e pelas suas diferentes interfaces. Tal como sucedeu no projecto visual moderno, os ideais de semelhança, transparência e nitidez convivem hoje tranquilamente com ruídos próprios ao «fotográfico», dando conta de como uma cultura visual das lentes continua a interferir no actual imaginário digital, e, desta vez, não por razões técnicas mas sim retóricas.

The Haptic Interface of 'The Flea' from 'Nos Mondaines'

The Third Image. Stereo Photography in Portugal , 2019

Some would say without hesitation that intimacy is inherent to stereoscopy. Particularly because ... more Some would say without hesitation that intimacy is inherent to stereoscopy. Particularly because stereoscopy is the device par excellence of approach, and of the loss of distances: it amplifies images and brings us near its objects, hence available to the eye and to its very close and detailed viewing. Stereoscopy isolates the observer from the rest of the world, through a viewer, transforming him into a voyeur that is easily
absorbed by the sensuality of the relief. It is therefore not surprising that intimacy has emerged as one of the main themes of the stereoscopic photography.

A Interface Háptica de 'A Pulga' de Nos Mondaines

A Terceira Imagem. A Fotografia Estereoscópica em Portugal, 2019

Dir-se-á sem hesitações que a intimidade é inerente à estereoscopia. Desde logo porque a estereos... more Dir-se-á sem hesitações que a intimidade é inerente à estereoscopia. Desde logo porque a estereoscopia é o dispositivo por excelência da aproximação, da perda das distâncias: amplia as imagens e aproxima-nos dos seus objectos, doravante à disposição do olhar e das suas muito próximas e minuciosas inspecções. Através de um visor a estereoscopia isola o observador do seu mundo e transforma-o num voyeur que facilmente se deixa absorver pela sensualidade do relevo. Não será por isso de estranhar que a intimidade tenha emergido como um dos principais temas da fotografia estereoscópica.

Involuntary Pseudos. The Untransposed Stereos in The Digital Archives

Archiving Proceedings, 2019

Digitizing stereo photographs can bring back to museums and archives some of the challenges that ... more Digitizing stereo photographs can bring back to museums and archives some of the challenges that early photographers had to deal with. When digitizing the original negative plates in wet collodion or in gelatin silver, the protocol followed for stereos is apparently the same as for mono photography. As a result, archives are presenting to their public and researchers files with untransposed left and right images of each stereo pair. In other words, wrong or 'pseudo views' are being uploaded daily in institutional websites and databases, adding an extra layer of difficulty for the presentation and viewing of some historical gems of western visual culture. This problem was first noticed during a research project dedicated to Portuguese stereo photography which has catalogued thirty one collections of stereo photography, consisting of mainly negatives.

The Animation of The Photographic: Stereoscopy and Cinema. The Experiments of Aurélio da Paz dos Reis

Early Popular Visual Culture, 2016

Cinema was born in a visual culture where stereoscopy played a crucial role. In this paper, we wi... more Cinema was born in a visual culture where stereoscopy played a crucial role. In this paper, we will discuss how stereoscopy and cinema derived from a common programme caused by photography that brought images and life closer, boosting an unseen period of mergers and experiments in the history of the image. The project of moving images was also a stereoscopic project. To animate the images in relief was one of the main challenges of the realism desired by nineteenth-century visual culture. In particular, I will reflect on the stereoscopic photography by Aurélio da Paz dos Reis, his cinematic experiments, the major discourses that followed and the ‘archive fever’ that hit it. Furthermore, I will consider the specificities of stereoscopy as a personal, as opposed to communal, medium and technique. I also argue that if the nineteenth-century stereo visual culture has anticipated our current personal media age, the unstable presence of stereoscopy in the twentieth-century mass media culture becomes an understandable and inevitable phenomenon.

The Metrics of Landscape. Stereo Fieldwork by Francisco Afonso Chaves and Other Portuguese Explorers

Artnodes. E-Journal on Art, Science and Technology, 2018

Although the invention of the stereoscope in 1832 shed new light on the anomalies of vision and o... more Although the invention of the stereoscope in 1832 shed new light on the anomalies of vision and on the constructive role of the mind in visual perception, this became no obstacle to its scientific uses throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. On the contrary, combined with photography, the stereoscope embodied both the imperialist politics of the 19th century and its scientific ideology. These pairs of twin images perfected photography as an accurate and credible scientific instrument and gave explorers the chance to map, calculate and "grab the world in an image". The use of stereo photography in geodesic and topographic fieldworks is one of the best evidences of such scientific practices, largely overlooked by stereo photography studies. Here, we introduce the stereoviews by Portuguese explorers such as Francisco Afonso Chaves, an early-20th-century Azorean naturalist, and analyse a particular series of Verascope glass plates which represent theodolites photographed during his fieldwork. The identification of Recommended citation Flores, Victor. 2018. "The metrics of landscape. Stereo fieldwork by Francisco Afonso Chaves and other Portuguese explorers". In Pau Alsina, Ana Rodríguez and Vanina Y. Hofman (coords.). "Media Archaeology". Artnodes. No. 21: 99-108. UOC [Accessed: dd/mm/yy] http://dx.

2.0 Post-Screen Condition

Unspoken Dialogues. Post-Screen Festival, 2016

The idea of a post-screen era seems to suggest a historic moment when images begin to detach them... more The idea of a post-screen era seems to suggest a historic moment when images begin to detach themselves from screens and migrate to other surfaces. Today, this idea represents a challenge to civilization: not so much because those 'other surfaces' do not exist or are not being tested out , but because screens have incorporated our spaces, our imaginations and many of our social practices. Doing without them could easily be seen as a kind of threat, especially since screens are synonymous with the everyday, with access to information, to work and leisure, to the point where we count on them to touch and interact in the world. And so it has been, gradually, since shadow theaters and magic lantern shows, from cinema and television, right up to multiple and mobile screens of varying formats that make up our current media culture.

Victor Flores (org.), A Terceira Imagem. A fotografia estereoscópica em Portugal

A Terceira Imagem. A fotografia estereoscópica em Portugal, 2019

Nos anos posteriores Nasi ficará conhecido pela sua aproximação à Casa Real. O acervo do Palácio ... more

Stereoscopic Photography in Portugal. Discourses and Practices of a Visual Culture (includes 'The Portuguese Stereoscope by Aurélio da Paz dos Reis')

The Third Image. Stereo Photography in Portugal , 2019, 2019

Nowadays, nineteenth century stereoscopic photography can surprise 3D cinema spectators, touchscr... more Nowadays, nineteenth century stereoscopic photography can surprise 3D cinema spectators, touchscreen users and virtual reality players. It can surprise them by demonstrating that current visual experiences with three-dimensionality and with virtual touch were being prepared since the early days of photography. On the other hand, stereo photography was able to document reality (short exposures and rich details) in such a way that allowed a more spontaneous and current coverage of reality, thus anticipating several photojournalism and cinema experiences. Portugal has a wide and rich legacy of stereoscopic photography, a practice that remained popular until the first decades of the twentieth century, with some of its practitioners receiving prizes in international competitions and being featured at Universal Exhibitions. To revisit stereoscopy can be a journey to the magic world of immersive images and the multiple sensorial experiences with which modern times have tested them. This book invites us to that revisitation, revealing the cultural imaginary, the speeches, and the commercial practices which ensured stereo photography a solid and unique place in the Portuguese visual culture.

A Fotografia Estereoscópica em Portugal. Práticas e Discursos de uma Cultura Visual (inclui "O 'Estereoscópio Portuguez' de Aurélio da Paz dos Reis")

A Terceira Imagem. A Fotografia Estereoscópica em Portugal, 2019

A fotografia estereoscópica do século XIX pode hoje surpreender os espectadores do cinema 3D, os ... more A fotografia estereoscópica do século XIX pode hoje surpreender os espectadores do cinema 3D, os utilizadores de ecrãs tácteis e os jogadores de realidade virtual. Pode surpreendê-los por demonstrar que as actuais experiências visuais com a tridimensionalidade e com a sensação virtual do toque começaram a ser preparadas desde os primeiros tempos da fotogra-fia. Por outro lado, a fotografia estereoscópica possuía ainda capacidades documentais (exposições rápidas e com muitos detalhes) que habilitaram uma cobertura mais espontânea e actual da realidade, antecipando experiências do fotojornalis-mo e do cinema. Em Portugal há um amplo e rico património fotográfico de estereoscopia que comprova a sua populari-dade até às primeiras décadas do século XX, tendo alguns dos seus autores sido premiados internacionalmente e represen-tados em Exposições Universais. O reencontro com a estereoscopia equivale a uma viagem à magia das imagens imersivas e às múltiplas experiências sensoriais com que a Modernidade as testou. Este livro propõe esse reencontro, revelando o imaginário cultural, os discursos e as práticas comerciais que garantiram à estereoscopia um lugar singular e consistente na cultura visual portuguesa.

Nowadays, nineteenth century stereoscopic photography can surprise 3D cinema spectators, touchscreen users and virtual reality players. It can surprise them by demonstrating that current visual experiences with three-dimensionality and with virtual touch were being prepared since the early days of photography. On the other hand, stereo photography was able to document reality (short exposures and rich details) in such a way that allowed a more spontaneous and current coverage of reality, thus anticipating several photojournalism and cinema experiences. Portugal has a wide and rich legacy of stereoscopic photography, a practice that remained popular until the first decades of the twentieth century, with some of its practitioners receiving prizes in international competitions and being featured at Universal Exhibitions. To revisit stereoscopy can be a journey to the magic world of immersive images and the multiple sensorial experiences with which modern times have tested them. This book invites us to that revisitation, revealing the cultural imaginary, the speeches, and the commercial practices which ensured stereo photography a solid and unique place in the Portuguese visual culture.