For the young Brian May, a fascination with 3-D picture cards given away in Weetabix packets led to a lifelong passion for ‘stereoscopic’ images. Soon May was taking sequential pictures with his Woolworth’s 2/6d camera and making pairs of sketches that transformed into 3-D scenes when he ‘relaxed [his] eyes and let the images float together’. Later, he scoured antique shops and auctions for stereoscopic photographs and the ‘viewers’ that enabled him to see the images in all their glory. It was in this way that May discovered the work of Thomas Richard Williams (1824-1871), who, in the 1850s, had created a series of 59 stereo cards depicting life in a small English village – Scenes in Our Village.
The book gives an exceptional insight into everyday village life at the time – with a woman at her spinning wheel, the blacksmith outside his smithy, three men at the grindstone sharpening a tool, the villagers in the fields, bringing in the harvest as well as often taking time to enjoy a good gossip.
In every case the original verse which accom-panied the view is reproduced, enriching the picture by revealing the inner thoughts of the subjects, or transforming it into a comment on Life, Nature, or the Spiritual World. In addition, May and Vidal have researched and annotated all the views, revealing another layer of meaning, by exploring the history of these real characters, this idyllic village and its links with the present day. The result is a powerfully atmospheric and touching set of photographs.
Incredible! I get Google alerts for Brian May and it is not unusual to get them on a surprising number of unrelated Brian Mays, but for another Roger Taylor to show up in relation to Brian's Book is almost spooky! Or is Roger leading a double life that we have not yet discovered? Perhaps it is a different version of Brian's Curse that has been cast onto RT and he has been drawn into Brian's orbit - a tractor beam, which seems likely considering that Brian is also an astrophysicist and knows about such things? [img=/images/smiley/msn/wink_smile.gif][/img]
Is it worth getting? I am such a loser Queen fan - I don't even have Bang. Keep thinking if I'd see it in a shop I'd get it, but never get around to ordering it.
I've been trying to decide whether to get it. I kind of like stuff like that, but on the other hand I'm not sure if I would get it if Brian wasn't involved. I think that if I were to come across something like that in the flesh somewhere I'd probably be taken with it.
I've looked at amazon for used copies of Bang, though I'm really not interested much in that sort of thing. It does seem to get very good reviews as a book that is done in a way to inspire interest in the subject though.
I'll buy it....really just because Brian created it.....and hopeful that I find it interesting...actually looking forward to showing it to my mum who has always been into old English villages
I could never understand why some people first write something down in Word and than paste it elsewhere without taking care of things like encoding
In this poster's case, probably for the sheer fun of being annoying. Anyway, on topic, I find this book to be a very interesting concept, especially as an historian, considering how most photographic material of every-day life from the first half of the 20th century or before is highly fragmenten, offering mostly single 'snapshots'. This, however, offers a more coherent picture, and could prove very valuable indeed to social historians.