Here is an example of what I was describing. It looks better as a full screen example, like this.
You would have to use something special to create the weird effect when you move the mouse directly over the picture. But I don’t think that really adds that much to the overall effect. So between this and what manthrax has provided below, you have all the pieces you need to duplicate the basic effect.
The other things like text and the authors names are also easily created using standard text and rotating objects. The nice thing is that, once you have it set up, three.js handles all the math for you.