DigitalFusion — Now Playing in Stereo!

Stereoscopic photography is a lost art, but now — with recently announced major Hollywood films and video games using the 3D technique — it is seeing a revitalization. But where did this art form come from, and who are it’s masters?

You’ll find the answers to both of those questions at the drkrm.gallery show, featuring the original works of Jack Laxer.

These vintage stereoscopic kodachrome images were carefully scanned by DigitalFusion and minutely positioned using modern 3D stereoscopic imaging techniques to create for the first time, a gallery show of these previously unseen works as prints. “To be able to view these images as prints, and not in a backlit stereoscopic viewer is quite an achievement.” notes Hugh Milstein from DigitalFusion. “Collaborating with Jack Laxer and Alan Leib on this effort brings to life a new dimension in the presentation of stereoscopic photography.”

Ultra-Angeles: Kodachrome in 3-D
The Stereo Photography of Jack Laxer

August 8 to September 6, 2009

drkrm.gallery is pleased to announce the exhibition of Ultra-Angeles: Kodachrome in 3-D, The Stereo Photography of Jack Laxer. There will be a VIP Preview of Ultra-Angeles on Saturday, August 8, 2009 from 8-10 PM and a public reception honoring the photographer on Saturday, August 15, from 7-10 PM. The exhibit will be on view from August 8 to September 6, 2009.

Ultra-Angeles features rarely seen images of Southern California’s commercial landscape from 1952-1969 — a dreamworld of Googie coffee shops, tail-finned cars, and sleek office towers — in stunning stereo 3-D and vivid full color Kodachrome.

Many notable architects including Paul Williams, William Cody, and the masters of the Modern California Coffee Shop, Armet & Davis, hired 3-D photographer Jack Laxer to document their newly completed works. Using a specially adapted Stereo Realist camera, Laxer’s lens revealed a vivid depth filled world, with a precision and artistry unseen before or since in the realm of stereo photography.

Like Julius Shulman, Laxer’s primary subject matter was the ultramodern architecture of midcentury America. However, unlike Shulman’s famous black and white 2-D images of private residential oases, Laxer’s work documented the ultramodern Main Streets of Los Angeles in a pristine palette of Kodachrome colors with a hyper-exaggerated stereo depth.

Laxer’s progressive subject matter perfectly embodies the spirit of modernism, both as an artistic movement as well as an everyday reality in postwar Los Angeles. His amazing views offer a full-color, 3-D glimpse into a world that no longer exists, even as we drive by it every day.

Guest curator Alan Leib is the Chairman of the Los Angeles Conservancy’s Modern Committee, and one of LA’s leading cultural activists. Mr. Leib has led successful battles to preserve many of LA’s most important modern buildings, and created, co-produced and hosted the Conservancy’s Built by Becket and 3D-LA events, the latter being an IMAX theater presentation of Mr. Laxer’s Ultra-Angeles era work.

drkrm. gallery is an exhibition space dedicated to fine art and documentary photography, cutting edge and alternative photographic processes and the display and survey of popular cultural images.