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Miriam Ross, From the material to the virtual: the pornographic body in stereoscopic photography, 3D cinema and virtual reality, Screen, Volume 60, Issue 4, Winter 2019, Pages 548–566, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjz039
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The human body, with its three-dimensional contours and textured surfaces, has been a favoured subject for stereoscopic (3D) representation for almost two centuries. Attempts to achieve greater fidelity in representing the body’s depth relations have combined stereoscopic technology and immersive fields of view, from initial experiments with photographic images in the nineteenth century to the development of virtual reality (VR) headsets in recent decades. In each case the production of a slightly different image for each eye allows the viewer to fuse the images into one, seemingly depth-rich vista. As Elena del Río suggests, just as the body in moving images is always contingent upon movement for its representation,1 the body in stereoscopy is always contingent upon additional depth cues. These cues allow the body to achieve a particular materiality not found in other screen media. Stereoscopic layers of depth give bodies a tactile solidity, bringing them closer to the touchable surfaces of other plastic arts such as sculpture, whilst retaining the premise of direct reproduction. Furthermore, in the same way that ‘the body’s movement and gestures are capable of transforming static forms and concepts typical of a representational paradigm into forces and concepts that exhibit a transformative/expansive potential’,2 stereoscopic depth is capable of displaying more detailed spatial dynamics, which in turn produce affective modes that develop a transformative object of the gaze in three-dimensional space. With these factors taken into consideration, the stereoscopic body raises significant questions about what exactly becomes visible in this particular form of representation and how that visibility is controlled. One way of addressing these questions is to understand what happens when stereoscopic representation operates in the context of reproducing a sexually commodified body.
