Cover photo of the 1983 edition of 'The Society of the Spectacle'  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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The cover[1][2] of the 1983 edition of Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle features a photograph by the Life magazine photographer, J. R. Eyerman of an audience wearing 3-D glasses. On November 26, 1952, at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland, California, the premiere screening of the film Bwana Devil by Arch Oboler took place as the first full-length, color 3-D (aka 'Natural Vision') motion picture. Eyerman took a series of photographs of the audience wearing 3-D glasses.

Life magazine used one of the photographs as the cover of a brochure about the 1946-1955 decade. The photograph employed in the Black & Red pirate edition of The Society of the Spectacle shows the audience in "a virtually trance-like state of absorption, their faces grim, their lips pursed;"[3] however, in the one chosen by Life, "the spectators are laughing, their expressions of hilarity conveying the pleasure of an uproarious, active spectatorship."[4] The Black and Red version also is flipped left to right, and cropped. Despite widespread association among English-speaking readers, Debord had nothing to do with this cover illustration, which was chosen by Black and Red.