I'm Bob Aldridge and I am based in London

Two of my log term interests have been Egyptology and Stereoscopy so, when I discovered that Francis Frith had travelled to Egypt three tmes between 1857 and 1860 and, as well as larger format flat images, had made stereoscopic images of the sites, the two interests were brought together.

I have travelled to Egypt many times, and often carried copies of Frith's images so I could try to take current images of the places that he photographed. This is not as easy as it sounds. Often, the ground that he stood on has been completely excavated away. Sometimes the ruins on the site have completely vanished. Some sites have been reconstructed.

In terms of stereoscopic imaging, I started in 1973 when I found a Wray Stereo Graphic camera and viewer in a camera shop in Croydon. It wasn't until 1981 that I made my first trip to Egypt. By now I was using an East German Belplasca camera. Many of the images taken on that trip are now historic in their own right - but I hadn't yet discovered Francis Frith!

A dealer in collectible cameras and other photographica in Bath lent me a few of Frith's Stereo Views to copy and I organised the re-binding of a copy of Frith's book Egypt, Nubia and Ethiopia which contains 100 stereoscopic views for David Burder. I was able to photographically copy these before returning the book to its owner. I have since acquired my own copy.

Francis Frith's stereoscopic views are usually founs as "stereoviews" or "stereo cards" but they were also published as glasss stereo slides which would have been viewed in a viewer of the type designed by David Brewster. All of Frith's images command a premium price, but the glass slides can fetch hundreds of dollars...