I found 21 glass plate negatives with stereo images of the First World War. The slides provide an interesting insight into the mobilisation of the French army during the first weeks of the conflict.

Belgium was occupied by the German army during the First World War. Only a small part of southwest Flanders remained Belgian territory and was defended by the Allied armies. The city of Ypres was close to the frontline and was surrounded by German troops. The city remained in Allied hands during the war, but the Ypres Sailant became the scene of four major battles.

This stereoview shows a group of German prisoners of war guarded by French soldiers on horses. They're walking past a house with the text Gott strafe England! 1914/15. The photo was taken in the village of Bucy-le-Long in Northern France.

The vast majority of images from the First World War are black and white photos, but original images in color exist. They were made by using the autochrome process developed by the French Lumière brothers.

Erotic photography is almost as old as photography itself. Stereoscopic images of nude females were made by photographers like Auguste Belloc and Félix-Jacques Moulin in the 1850s. Erotic images became widely available in the beginning of the 20th century.

A rare wooden box with a hundred 45x107 glass stereoviews with images of the First World War and a basic handheld stereoscope.

My photo project about the First World War started in Verdun in 2009. Nine years later I started collecting stereoviews of the war. This created a nice interaction between these two passions. I’m now searching for stereoviews with images of locations that I've photographed during my photo project, but I also started taking new photos of locations that I recognised from stereoviews.

The First World War was the first major conflict where photography played an important role. Germany recognised its potential and used photographs for propaganda from 1914. The images were used to influence the public opinion in neutral countries. France realized that it could not stay behind and decided to set up its own photography unit to oppose German propaganda.

Stereoscopy is a technique to create the illusion of depth when viewing stereoscopic images. Today we call it 3D, but the technique is more than 175 years old.

Most French stereoviews with images of the First World War contain a short description which is printed on the slide. In best case, it describes the place, subject and a year. However, most descriptions are brief and sometimes even incorrect. This makes it difficult to find out more about the story behind the image.