Louisiana Purchase Exposition, the lagoon, cascades and Festival Hall

The Louisiana Purchase Exposition, commonly known as the Saint Louis World's Fair of 1904, was the last great international exposition before World War I. The fair, built on a 1,200 acre site, included hundreds of thousands of objects, people, animals, displays, and publications from 62 exhibiting countries and 43 of the 45 states. The setting of world records, such as the largest organ, and working displays of every important technological advance were significant design goals. The Fair was a combination of trade show, civic showpiece, and monument to culture, along with more than a tinge of American pride. The Fair showcased the grandiose ambition of the gilded age, forming a kind of collective tribute to the nineteenth century's international understanding of the furtherance of peace, prosperity, and progress. It's a grand snapshot in time of American and foreign societies as they wished to portray themselves.

Stereographs are devices capable of building a three-dimensional​ image out of two photographs that have about two and a half inches difference between them so that it could imitate the two eyes’ real field of view. Combining these images into a single one with the help of stereoscope, a person can experience the illusion of the image’s depth. Stereoscope uses the same principle as in human binocular vision. Our eyes are separated by about two inches, so we see everything from two different angles. When the brain combined those views in a single picture, we get the spatial depth and dimension. Stereographs were extremely popular between 1850 and 1930 all around the world. Millions of stereographs were made during that time. There was a broad range of themes: landscape, travel, historical moments, nature disasters, architecture and many others. Nowadays, simply launch this collection full screen and put your mobile device in Google Cardboard Viewer.

Was the son of Jesse Albert Graves, an early American photographer who produced nearly 500 views of the western part of Pennsylvania. C. H. Graves studied the art of photography under his father and began to practice it in Philadelphia around 1880. He founded several companies to distribute his prints, the most prominent of which was the Universal Photo Art Company, which operated from 1895 to 1910. It was based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with a branch in Naperville, Illinois, where F. A. Messerschmidt served as manager. Graves' catalogue contained nearly 1600 original views. He used a platinum printing process and some of the views were labelled The Art Nouveau (Platino) Stereograph.

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