Stereoscopic media: Scholarship beyond booms and busts

Stereoscopic imaging has had a rich history in photographic, televisual, cinematic, theme-park and gaming form since its emergence in the nineteenth century. Nonetheless, 3D media’s many booms and busts have led it to be treated as a cyclical ‘fad’. Its peak moments suggest a trend of death and rebirth, and stereoscopy has come to be characterized, more than any other media form, by its continual passing. But while scepticism towards this form has become a standard popular and scholarly refrain, less acknowledged is the way in which 3D imaging has remained in public consciousness and at the peripheries of popular visual culture throughout its lengthy history. This article explores the interstitial moments of stereoscopic media’s history and takes account of the determinants that have allowed it to thrive and wane while foregrounding the role that popular imagination has played in allowing it to persist.