The oldest known family photograph taken at Stonehenge has been found in the archives of Brian May, Queen’s guitarist.
The 3D stereoview image created by Henry Brooks, an early photographer, captures his family at the site in the 1860s.
It was discovered in May’s archives after English Heritage, the site’s custodians, appealed for early images of families at the stones.
May is a leading collector of stereographs, which were invented in the 1830s and involve two images taken of the same scene from slightly different perspectives. They are viewed through a stereoscope and “fused” into a single 3D image.
May is to provide a soundtrack of Queen hits for a short film of old and modern stereoviews at a Stonehenge visitor centre exhibition. He has been fascinated by stereocards since getting one in a cereal packet as a child, and said Brooks’s image was a “fantastic early example”. “It feels even more evocative when set to music,” he added. “A bit like a silent movie, and we thought it would be great fun to recreate the image as a stereo view at Stonehenge and breathe new life into an old photo.”
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Susan Greaney, an archaeologist with English Heritage, said that it was keen to track down Brooks’s descendants to recreate the picture.
The original shows his wife, Caroline, daughter, Caroline Jane, and son, Frank, who appears to be contemplating the so-called leaning stone, which was set upright in 1901.
Greaney said: “Victorian 3D images have a real vividness and depth in themselves. This one provides a further dimension because we know who took it.”
