7 November 2021: The Image Gallery is live - a fully searchable database with almost 5,000 of our scans, which amounts to a significant portion of the physical collection! While we will be implementing more features in the future, we are quite happy with the work in progress and want to release it today, on Remembrance Sunday. Please email me through the Contact page to obtain a login to add comments, or just browse through the gallery at your leisure. Those with anaglyphic glasses might want to check out the growing collections of anaglyphs associated with some of the images - just check the box marked Images with Anaglyphs! Happy browsing!
More site news & update information is available here.
This is the online site for the Jordan/Ference Collection of stereographs related to the Great War (FWW/WWI). Stereoscopic photography was a popular pastime both before and after 1914-1918, and companies in most combatant nations sold stereoviews. This web site describes the manufacturers of photographic stereoviews and explains how to identify them based on their markings. Scans of the actual images are also located within this site, as are check-lists representing offerings from the various publishers. But the heart of this site is the newly incorporated Image Gallery, reachable through the banner below:
First World War stereoview sets were sold throughout the war and
remained popular for many years after the war ended. In the United
States, the most commonly encountered Great War stereographs were
produced by four principal companies: Keystone, Underwood &
Underwood, and W. E. Troutman of this country, and Realistic Travels
of England. Other English-language stereograph sets were produced by
Underwood & Underwood's English subsidiary and by Rose
Stereoviews of Australia. Another English company, Nightingale, made
battlefield scenes taken a year or so after the war. Of all the
producing nations, the French not surprisingly appear to have been
the most prolific, with several major companies mass-producing both
glass and paper stereographs. One major German company, Neue
Photographische Gesellschaft (NPG), manufactured a
variety of views for Germany and Austria-Hungary. In addition to
images from all of the major publishers, this site also contains
those taken by officers from both sides of the conflict with their
own personal stereo cameras ("amateur" or "private" views).
The stereoview scans contained in this site are being provided
royalty-free for research, duplication, and other non-commercial use to anybody who is interested in them. You
may copy and use these images freely. Should you decide to
publish any of these images elsewhere, please acknowledge the
provenance with "Image from the Jordan/Ference Collection,
courtesy of greatwarin3d.org". If you need more
detailed scans please contact us. Except where noted, the 3D
scans presented on this site are from the physical Collection. Scans from other sources are included for reference purposes and the
source is identified on these images.
The text in the Research Notes portion of this site, except
where footnoted, is the product of original research and is
copyrighted. Brief excerpts may be used when credit is
given. For other uses, please contact us. We have also included a non-comprehensive list of articles in which scans from the Jordan/Ference collection have been featured.
Enjoy browsing our site. Your feedback is important to us. Please let us know if you have images to add to the site, new or corrected information, or questions concerning First World War stereography.