About Us

 

George Mutter and Bernard Fishman

Photoarchive3D is a digital archive of original historic photographic stereoviews created by George L. Mutter (left), and Bernard P. Fishman (right).  With exclusive access to a unique collection of 35,000 original images of broad topical and geographic coverage from 1855 through modern times, they are historical preservationists on a mission to engage people of the present with their shared past..  GL Mutter is an academic physician trained at Harvard and Columbia, and BP Fishman an Egyptologist and nonprofit institutional administrator trained at Columbia U. and U. of Pennsylvania.

The portrait was made in 2018 using wet plate collodin on metal ("tintype"), as a stereo half of a stereophotograph. The photographer,  Richard Cynan-Jones, faithfully recreated this 19th century process in St. Andrews, Scoland, UK.

Read about an Interview with Dr. Mutter at the Mostly Mammoths blog regarding a 2013 presentation of "19th Century Egypt in 3D: A Victorian Trip Up the Nile" at the Museum of Science, Boston.

You can download a full resume of our activities HERE.

Mission Statement:

    • To preserve image content and annotated context of historical physical images
    • To promote utilization of a historic photographic archival materials in educational and scholarly works.
    • To collaboratively develop programs, presentations, and mechanisms for achieving the above goals.

Enabling Resources

    • Exclusive access to a digital archive of original 19th and early 20th century historical photographic material of sufficient depth and range to have unique scholarly, entertainment, and educational value.
    • Contemporary (vintage image labels and descriptions) and scholarly annotation of curated images to preserve and interpret their original context.
    • Web-based presence for education, distributed access, and visibility.

Collection Statistics, as of June, 2024

All files are Adobe Digital Negatives (DNG) format.   Please See our Technical Section for further details.     

Parameter Number
Total Photographic Objects aprox 35,000
Total Digital Negatives 86,996
Total File Storage 1,703 GB (1.7 TB)
Average Negative per Object 2.20 neg/object
Average 21 Megapixel File Size 20.6 MB/DNG File