Author(s): Jim Naughten

Nature Writing

Throughout his life photographer Jim Naughten has been fascinated with the natural world. As a child, he collected fossils he found near his home in Dover. Now a renowned photographer, Naughten has started to experiment with stereography and has turned to his boyhood interest, gaining access to the archives of some of the world's most prestigious natural history museums. This gorgeously produced book contains fifty images of marine life, reptiles, mammals, birds and primates photographed expressly for viewing through a stereoscope, which is included with the book. Stereoscopy was invented in 1839 to study and explain binocular vision. Having two eyes allows humans to determine distance and depth and stereoscopy shows a left- and right-eye view from a slightly different angle, as we see things in day-to-day life. Looking through the stereo viewer, readers will see the specimens as three-dimensional objects. As the images jump off the page, their incredible details become apparent-delicate bat wings, the spiraling skeleton of a python, the almost mythic form of a leafy sea dragon.A foreword by Martin Barnes of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London offers an assessment of the work while essays on the specimens themselves and the history of stereoscopy provide rich background to this photographic technology, and to Naughten's achievement in bringing to life a world that seamlessly melds the past and present.