View of Palermo Cathedral Palermo, la Cattedrale 1880

This is Roberto Rive's photographic view of Palermo Cathedral, captured sometime in the mid-19th century. It's a stereoscopic image, meaning two nearly identical photos are mounted side by side. When viewed through a special device, the scene appears three-dimensional. Photography in this era was a labor-intensive chemical process. Wet collodion, the technique likely used here, required coating a glass plate with light-sensitive emulsion, exposing it in the camera while still wet, and then developing it immediately. This meant photographers had to carry a portable darkroom with them. The popularity of stereoscopic views like this one coincided with the rise of tourism. They offered a way to bring distant places home, feeding a growing appetite for visual documentation of the world, and of course, creating a market for photographers like Rive. Consider this image not just as a picture, but as a physical record of a complex and alchemic process, and as a commodity made for a burgeoning culture of mass media.