Diableries: The Complete Edition: Stereoscopic Adventures in Hell

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The re-imagined Diableries AR App allows users to delve into the world of the Diableries stereoscopic cards by exploring Brian May’s personal collection in amazing detail, and the augmented reality functionality allows users to interact with the devilish characters. Thousands of the cards would have been produced and they were something of an underground phenomenon on both sides of the Channel.

The French version of the book Diableries has been updated to include a new discovery – a card titled Correspondance de Satan, one of the two cards reported missing in the English edition – which surfaced only a few months ago. This edition also features some new ultra-high quality images fully restored over several months by Dr. May from the newly found negatives themselves.Whether it’s a horse race, a bicycle race or a card game, he always wins,” says May. But there was a political as well as a moral purpose. “These images became an opportunity for artists to express sedition. You get scenes, for example, in which Napoleon III is subtly portrayed as the Devil. Quite, often, artists got thrown into jail if they produced work which displeased the powers that be.” This book will be a family heirloom that will hopefully be passed down for generations long after I have joined the choir eternal. Yes, it's that good. Not just because of the content (which I will briefly discuss in a moment) but because it is an amazing artifact. A shrine, really, or an immersive space dedicated to the artists that created these scenes and the time in which they were produced. With special visual and audio effects, the Diableries AR App’s characters react to and interact with the user’s play, with the entire experience seamlessly recorded in-app, for immediate uploading and sharing to all social channels. Brian May and colleagues talk about the project in London on October 30 and November 1, and in Settle, North Yorkshire, on November 6; an exhibition runs at Gallery on The Green, Settle, until December 14. See London Stereo

The sculptures are so wonderful and the compositions are so adventurous,” May tells The Post. “I love the fact that, magically, they transform when you hold them up to the light.” There is no question that these 150-year-old works were meant as more than just a mild diversion or entertainment. Physically, too, there was more to them than met the eye: lay them flat on a table and they appear monochrome, but lift them up to the light and the colour floods in. Emeralds sparkle, faces flush pink, and the eyes of the devils take on a sinister, ruby-red gleam. Two 19th-century artists were principally responsible for these images. One was called Louis Alfred Habert; the other was Pierre Adolphe Hennetier, who started as a sculptor for the Church, producing pretty straight illustrations of what life would be like for sinners in hell. “Gradually, though, a little bit of dark humour started to creep in,” May explains, “as well as references to current events and figures in authority. In fact, although a lot of the scenes are taking place in hell, most of the skeletons and other characters seem to be having a fair amount of fun.” Brian May, Denis Pellerin and Paula Fleming proudly present their Diableries exhibition; a devilment of colourful and infernally detailed three-dimensional images of the underworld, originating from the 19 th century.They’ve used a red–cyan anaglyph to combine the two portraits — namely, the area depicting La Giaconda’s hands — and the result is like gazing upon Leonardo’s mysterious woman without 3D glasses. Essentially, there’s depth. But it’s impossible to know whether Carbon and Hesslinger’s observations are coincidental, or if Leonardo intentionally created the first stereoscopic art. The cards were part of the huge craze for stereoscopyin the mid-1800s, when the Diableries were produced over a 20-year period.

Denis Pellerin, dedicated photohistorian, was a teacher for over 30 years and has been interested in photography since the age of ten. He was bitten by the stereo bug in the 1980's, has been fascinated by the Diableries for over 25 years and has written several books and articles on 19th-century stereophotography for various magazines, institutions and museums. He graduated as an MA in Art History at the Sorbonne in 1999 and has since been specialising in French and British Victorian genre stereoviews. He is also currently working on his PhD. It’s a claim German researchers Claus-Christian Carbon and Vera Hesslinger assert in their study of Leonardo’s famous portrait, “Mona Lisa.” The pair have been analyzing the well-known version of La Giaconda that hangs at Paris’ Louvre, as well as an eerily similar copy known as the “Prado Mona Lisa,” housed at the Museo del Prado in Spain, and have concluded that the two artworks — taken together — may amount to the first stereoscopic image in the world. perceive objects at different perspectives, sending two separate, flat images to our brain to be translated into one three-dimensional representation. That is the image we “see.”The guitarist says the imagery reflects the mood of France between 1860 and 1890, when the Diableries were created — the country was besot with oppression and heavily influenced by church teachings of the afterlife. The Diableries were a collection of Stereoscopic cards produced in France - made by photographing a tableaux created from sculpted miniatures - which became hugely popular during the latter-half of the 19th Century. The cards depict scenes from Heaven, Hell and Purgatory, but are filled with sardonic wit and topical humour that poke a lot of fun at the social and political climate of the era. Brian May, astronomer and Queen guitarist, is also a passionate and knowledgeable collector of Victorian photography—and in particular, of 3D (stereoscopic) photography.