Bruce Graver gave a comprehensive tour of the Wye Valley during his lecture at the Humanities Center—all without leaving BYU’s campus.
Just by scrolling through YouTube or TikTok on your phone, you can visit some of the most popular tourist destinations in the world—all from the comfort of your own home. But long before travel vlogs and images were shared through social media, people observed popular travel destinations using a stereoscope: a device that creates the illusion of three-dimensional pictures by placing two images of the same location—taken at specific angles—side-by-side. On October 24, 2024, Bruce Graver, a humanities professor at Providence College and one of the original editors for the Cornell Wordsworth Collection, spoke at the Humanities Center Colloquium to discuss all things stereoscopes. There, he explored how these tools impacted travel by taking the audience on a walking tour of the Wye Valley (a valley in Wales and England) using only stereoscopes.
The World in Images
Stereoscopes were first invented in the 1800s and made their way into the hands of the public in 1851. Though they were initially created to demonstrate how the brain converts separate, two-dimensional images into one three-dimensional image, they quickly made their way into households as a means to travel without stepping outside. According to Graver, stereotypes “were the chief means by which 19th-century Europeans and Americans experienced photography.” In fact, as stereoscopes became increasingly popular, seeing foreign destinations became easier and more efficient than actually traveling. Graver explained that “a score of persons might, in the course of an hour, see more of Rome and see it better than if they had visited it in person.”
One of the most famous stereoscope tours showed Wye Valley as William Wordsworth—one of the leading Victorian-era poets—would have seen it. In 1798, Wordsworth wrote his famous poem “Tintern Abbey” after taking a walking tour along the scenic Wye Valley, which sits on the border of Wales and England. As the poem grew in popularity, many used stereoscopes to see the picturesque abbey and landscape described in Wordsworth’s poem.
Stereoscopic hyperspace extends between the arches and doorways, opening up the photograph before our eyes.
Graver displayed images from the original tour of the Wye Valley, using photographs from William Russell Sedgefield, George Washington Wilson, Thomas Ogle, and Francis Bedford. Together, these stereoscope photographers provided what Graver described as a “tour marked by its alternation of sites steeped in British history: the castles and the abbeys with breathtaking natural scenery.”
A Tour of the Wye
This tour stopped at numerous towns across the Wye Valley, starting in the town of Ross-on-Wye and ending in Monmouth. Graver included images of important landmarks—such as Goodrich Castle, the River Bluff, and the bridge in Chepstow—along the route from dozens of angles and perspectives, hoping to paint a picture of the scene as a whole. He said that at first glance, “these photographs are not that impressive. They are flat, confusing, and a bit claustrophobic. . . . But in the stereoscope, something surprising happens. Stereoscopic hyperspace extends between the arches and doorways, opening up the photograph before our eyes.”
Graver concluded the discussion by explaining that in these tours, finding the story behind an image or monument was sometimes more important than taking the image itself. In many ways, Graver said that finding the story behind seemingly monotonous scenes gave tours and destinations meaning. He explained that many tours made sure “to invest things that you wouldn’t necessarily look at with meaning. But, of course, some of these things are so unnoticeable that unless you’ve got the story attached, there’s no [meaning]. . . . That’s part of the paradox of touring.”
Learn about the Humanities Center’s upcoming lectures here.