Photography and Stereo Vision (Rediscover)

Why Aren’t We Talking About It All The Time?
For years I have been fascinated with how the human eye perceives depth, and particularly with how this relates to the two-dimensional photographic image. Many is the time I have come across a fascinating scene, full of nearby objects in interesting relationships, or perhaps a view of a city plaza, only to find that the photos I snap look like nothing much when I get home. There is an unbridgeable gap between how the brain combines the images coming from two eyes, and how that perception can be approximated in a flat print. This gap is intriguing and frustrating.
For some reason, I’ve never seen this issue discussed in the photography community—on the web, in books, anywhere.
The interesting thing is that we are basically happy with 2D images. Ever since people figured out how to create full 3D stereo images using photography, the result has never been much more than a curiosity. There were stereopticons in the 19thcentury, View-Masters star...