LONDON (AFP): Queen guitarist Brian May on Monday launched an exhibition from his collection of Victorian 3D photographs, united for the first time with the famous paintings they tried to recreate. Staged using props and actors, the “stereoscopic” cards were a British middle-class craze from the 1850s to the 1870s - giving anyone with a viewer a three-dimensional glimpse of the era’s celebrated but rarely seen artworks. Triggered by childhood cereal box giveaways, May has held a lifelong passion for 3D photos and the 67-year-old rock star’s now 100,000-strong collection of stereoscopes is one of the biggest in the world. The exhibition at London’s Tate Britain gallery, matching up the 3D photo recreations with the original Victorian paintings, is a dream come true for the guitar wizard. “It’s only recently that I realised how intimately they were connected,” May told AFP. “The stereoscopic side was always regarded as not quite artistic or as valid as the painting side but in this exhibition, you can make up your own mind.”