Portfolio

Historia Optica

The home page: five country galleries over a full-screen WebGL slider
The home page: five country galleries over a full-screen WebGL slider
The Vietnam gallery, 1962–1963: six albums in a 3D carousel
The Vietnam gallery, 1962–1963: six albums in a 3D carousel
Album Japan 01, 1950: 15 photos with place, date and an album note
Album Japan 01, 1950: 15 photos with place, date and an album note

Description

Historia Optica is an online gallery of historic photographs from Erik’s family collection. Most were taken by his father (1916–1985) and by his Belgian family, and they cover five countries: Belgium from around 1875 to 1944, the USA from 1917 to 1940, Japan in 1950, Korea in 1951–1952 and Vietnam in 1962–1963.

Every image is a real print from the collection. Erik scanned each one himself and removed scratches by hand in Photoshop. No image has been enhanced, upscaled or otherwise processed by AI.

The 263 photographs are arranged in 25 albums. Each album gives the place and date, and has a short note on what the photographs show. Visitors move through the galleries in a full-screen WebGL slider and 3D carousel, and can open any photo full size in a lightbox.

The site is static HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Its robots.txt and meta tags ask AI crawlers not to scrape the photographs or use them for training. Visitors who recognise someone, or can correct a caption, are invited to get in touch.

Technology

  • HTML/CSS
  • JavaScript
  • Three.js (WebGL)
  • Photoshop
  • Photo scanning & restoration