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=== Format ===
=== Format ===
The ''carte de visite'' was usually an [[albumen print]] on thin paper glued onto a thicker paper card. The size of a ''carte de visite'' is {{convert|2.125|in|mm|order=flip|abbr=on}} × {{convert|3.5|in|mm|order=flip|abbr=on}} mounted on a card sized {{convert|2.5|in|mm|order=flip|abbr=on}} × {{convert|4|in|mm|order=flip|abbr=on}}.
The ''carte de visite'' was usually an [[albumen print]] on thin paper glued onto a thicker paper card. The size of a ''carte de visite'' is {{convert|2.125|in|mm|order=flip|abbr=on}} × {{convert|3.5|in|mm|order=flip|abbr=on}} mounted on a card sized {{convert|2.5|in|mm|order=flip|abbr=on}} × {{convert|4|in|mm|order=flip|abbr=on}}.

Cartes-de-visite were an adjunct to letter-writing; unlike the fragile daguerreotypes which preceded them and which also were used predominantly for portraits, they could be posted in regular manufactured [[Envelope|envelopes]] which had only become available ten years before. For example, as Belknap notes, [[Charles Darwin]] exchanged in his correspondence a large number; 132 photographic portraits before 1882. Their value to him was demonstrated in his response to their gift of an album by Dutch naturalists containing 217 carte de visites; "...for the few remaining years of my life, whenever I want cheering, I will look at the portraits of my distinguish co-workers in the field of science, and remember their generous sympathy. When I die the album will be the most precious bequest to my children."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Belknap |first=Geoffrey |title=Photography and Other Media in the Nineteenth Century |publisher=Penn State University Press |year=2018 |isbn=9780271082523 |editor-last=Leonardi, |editor-first=Nicoletta |edition=1st |location= United States |pages=142 |language=en |chapter=Photographs in Text: The Reproduction of Photographs in Nineteenth-Century Scientific Communication |editor-last2=Natale |editor-first2=Simone}}</ref>


=== Camera ===
=== Camera ===

Revision as of 12:12, 14 May 2023

André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri (May-August 1863) Schneider. Uncut, unmounted carte-de-visite albumen silver print from glass negative 18.8 x 24.3 cm (7 3/8 × 9 9/16 in.). Gilman Collection, Gift of The Howard Gilman Foundation, Metropolitan Museum of Art

The carte de visite[1] (French: [kaʁt də vizit], visiting card) was a format of small photograph which was patented in Paris by photographer André Adolphe Eugène Disdéri in 1854, although first used by Louis Dodero.[2][3] Each photograph was the size of a visiting card, and such photograph cards were commonly traded among friends and visitors in the 1860s. Albums for the collection and display of cards became a common fixture in Victorian parlors. The immense popularity of these card photographs led to the publication and collection of photographs of prominent persons, and it was the success of the carte de visite that led to photography's institutionalisation.[4]

History

Format

The carte de visite was usually an albumen print on thin paper glued onto a thicker paper card. The size of a carte de visite is 54.0 mm (2.125 in) × 89 mm (3.5 in) mounted on a card sized 64 mm (2.5 in) × 100 mm (4 in).

Cartes-de-visite were an adjunct to letter-writing; unlike the fragile daguerreotypes which preceded them and which also were used predominantly for portraits, they could be posted in regular manufactured envelopes which had only become available ten years before. For example, as Belknap notes, Charles Darwin exchanged in his correspondence a large number; 132 photographic portraits before 1882. Their value to him was demonstrated in his response to their gift of an album by Dutch naturalists containing 217 carte de visites; "...for the few remaining years of my life, whenever I want cheering, I will look at the portraits of my distinguish co-workers in the field of science, and remember their generous sympathy. When I die the album will be the most precious bequest to my children."[5]

Camera

Cartes de visite camera with four lenses. Engraving from D. V. Monckhoven. Traité Général Photographie Comprenant tous les Procédés Connus jusqu'à ce Jour; La Théorie de la Photographie Application aux Sciences d’Observation. 1863
1859 carte de visite of Napoleon III by Disdéri, which popularized the carte-de-visite format
One of the first cartes de visite of Queen Victoria taken by photographer John Jabez Edwin Mayall

Special cameras were designed with multiple lenses for their efficient production. Disdéri's 1854 patent was a camera of taking eight separate negatives on a single plate in a special holder. Rather than one large collodion plate being used to produce one image of the posed subject, Disdéri’s design initially exposed ten images on one plate, exposed either simultaneously or in sequence.

Each individual carte print was made at a fraction of the cost of producing one full-plate picture and ten were printed at once, saving time and thus efficiently serving the burgeoning consumer market for photography. Disdéri's patent was modified when eight images was found to be more practical, and in March 1860 optician Hyacinthe Hermagis patented a four-lens camera that became the standard.[6] Désiré Monckhoven reported in 1859;

We saw at M. Hermagis' a magnificent device, consisting of 4 identical double lenses mounted on a double frame camera built by M. Besson. This device, in a single operation, provides a plate on which 8 copies of the same image appear with perfect clarity. It seems that in the big cities, such as Paris, London, Berlin, St. Petersburg, these cartes de visite are widely used, so the device we saw at M. Hermagis' enjoys considerable success.[7]

Popularity

Box with cartes de visite of members of the Regout family, Netherlands, c. 1865

France

The carte de visite was slow to gain widespread use until 1859, when Disdéri published Emperor Napoleon III's photos in this format.[8] This made the format an overnight success; as Disdéri was to boast; "Everyone knows how I suddenly became popular by inventing the carte de visite which I had patented in 1854."[9] He charged 20 francs for twelve photographs when previously a single print would cost 50 to 100 francs, so that portraits were suddenly available at a cost that the lower middle classes could afford.[10] The new invention was so popular that its usage became known as "cardomania"[11] and spread quickly throughout Europe and then to the rest of the world.

Britain

In England John Jabez Edwin Mayall in Regent Street announced in August 1860 that he had;

...just received the Royal permission to publish a series of portraits which had been previously taken of the Royal family and of several other illustrious personages who have the honour of being intimate friends of her Majesty. These charming portraits are of miniature size; some of them are mounted on cards, and opposite to that of the Queen in the catalogue we find it described as a carte de visite. A complete series is placed upon a screen, in the centre ot which are large portraits of his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales in military uniform, and his Royal Highness Prince Alfred in the dress of a midshipman in the Royal navy. Besides the single.figure portraits of the Royal family, there are several most delightful groups of them variously arranged [...] These portraits having been entirely divested of all appearance of Royal state, possess an air of novelty, and the illustrious personages being represented as if perfectly unconscious of the photographer's presence, and engaged in their ordinary occupations, seem to afford the public a legitimate peep into the privacy of the Royal apartments, and give a decided charm to this publication [...] purchasers may, while they have the satisfaction of displaying their loyalty, also have the pleasure of selecting those arrangements of the portraits to which they may give a preference. The whole series, including the personal friends of her Majesty, amounts to 32 portraits, and are very beautiful specimens of the photographic art.[12]

Mayall’s publication of a carte-de-visite album of the Royal Family influenced the growing demand from the Victorian public for their own family photographic albums.

Germany

In Germany, Emperor Wilhelm I encouraged this pictorial culture by investing approximately 120 studios with the imprimatur of Hofphotograph (court photographer), based on the cartes that each had made of the kaiser, flatteringly posed with his gloved right fist planted powerfully on a table bearing his plumed helmet, and of his family. Millions of his photographs were collected in German family albums.[13]

India

By the late 1850s the carte-de-visite had been taken up in India, particularly among the wealthy of Bombay. Hurrychind Chintamon was a successful early Indian photographers who made carte-de visite portraits of literary, political, and business figures, the most famous of which was of the Maharaja of Baroda, thousands of which were circulated.[14]

Africa

Frederick York of Cape Town received the first carte-de-visite camera in South Africa as a present from H.R.H. Prince Alfred in February 1861.[15]

Carte de visite of John Wilkes Booth; circa 1863, by Alexander Gardner

America

The carte de visite photograph proved to be popular in America in the era of the Civil War; soldiers, friends and family members would have a means of inexpensively obtaining photographs and sending them to loved ones in small envelopes. People were not only buying photographs of themselves, but also collecting photographs of celebrities.[16]

Australia

In Australia Manchester-born William Davies began his photographic career with Walter Woodbury (inventor of the Woodburytype) and established several studios in Melbourne from 1858. William Davies and Co at 98 Bourke St., being opposite the Theatre Royal, sold cartes de visite of famous actors, actresses and opera singers. The company also specialised in carte de visite portraits of Protestant clergymen posed as if writing their sermons.[17] The Albury Banner and Wodonga Express of May 1863 finds it noteworthy that "a gentleman had occasion to advertise for a cook. Amongst other applications in answer to his advertisement was one from a "young lady" of the profession, enclosing her carte de visite and stating her salary."[18]

Alberto Henschel (c.1869) Foto de negra tirada na Bahia. Carte de visite, Leibniz-Institut Für Länderkunde

South America

A significant early carte-de-visite photographer in South America was Alberto Henschel who arrived in Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil, in 1866. He is best known for his widely distributed series of about 40 cartes-de-visite of African and Creole slaves and freedpersons taken in Recife, Salvador and Rio which he exhibited in the Brazilian international exposition of 1866 and which won a medal of merit at the Vienna Universal Exhibition of 1873. His works are housed at the Leibniz-Institut Für Länderkunde, Leipzig and the Emanoel Araújo Collection in the  Moreira  Salles  Institute  and  the  Joaquim Nabuco Foundation (Brazil).[19]

Demise

By the early 1870s, cartes de visite began to be supplanted by "cabinet cards", which were also usually albumen prints, but larger, and mounted on cardboard backs measuring 110 mm (4.5 in) by 170 mm (6.5 in). Nevertheless, while larger framed prints became available at photography studios, the two smaller formats were the main trade of professional portrait photographers even between 1888, when George Eastman introduced the mass produced and pre-loaded Kodak which industrialised the processing and printing of amateurs' photographs,[20] and 1900, when the Brownie camera simplified the technology and so reduced the cost of the medium that snapshot photography became a mass phenomenon.

See also

References

  1. ^ Also spelled carte-de-visite or erroneously referred to as carte de ville.
  2. ^ Welling
  3. ^ Leggat
  4. ^ Batchen, Geoffrey; Gitelman, Lisa (2019). "Afterword: Media History and History of Photography in Parallel Lines". In Leonardi, Nicoletta; Natale, Simone (eds.). Photography and other media in the nineteenth century (1st ed.). Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press. p. 197. ISBN 9780271079165. OCLC 1097575379.
  5. ^ Belknap, Geoffrey (2018). "Photographs in Text: The Reproduction of Photographs in Nineteenth-Century Scientific Communication". In Leonardi,, Nicoletta; Natale, Simone (eds.). Photography and Other Media in the Nineteenth Century (1st ed.). United States: Penn State University Press. p. 142. ISBN 9780271082523.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
  6. ^ Plunkett, John (2013-12-16). "Carte-de-visite". In Hannavy, John (ed.). Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography. Routledge. pp. 276–277. ISBN 978-0-203-94178-2.
  7. ^ van Monckhoven, Desirée (1859). Répertoire général de photographie pratique et théorique contenant les procédés sur plaque, sur papier, sur collodion sec et humide, sur albumine etc (in French) (3rd, avec atlas composé de dix planches ed.). Paris: A. Gaudin et frère. p. 596. OCLC 476794826.
  8. ^ Gernsheim p. 55
  9. ^ Disdéri, André-Adolphe-Eugène (1862). L'art de la photographie (1st ed.). Paris.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  10. ^ Freund, Gisèle (1980). Photography & society (Hardcover ed.). London: D. R. Godine. ISBN 9780879232504.
  11. ^ Newhall
  12. ^ "Fine Arts: Mr Mayall's Photographic Exhibition". Morning Herald. London. 16 August 1860. p. 6.
  13. ^ Zervigón, Andrés Mario (2017). Photography and Germany (1st ed.). United Kingdom: Reaktion Books. p. 61. ISBN 9781780237947.
  14. ^ Sandler, Martin W. (2002). Photography: an illustrated history. USA: Oxford University Press. p. 32. ISBN 9780195126082.
  15. ^ "South African "Cartomania" - a photographic phenomenon | The Heritage Portal". www.theheritageportal.co.za. Retrieved 2023-05-13.
  16. ^ Schweitzer, Marlis, and Joanne Zerdy. 2014. Performing Objects and Theatrical Things. Houndmills, Basingstoke; New York : Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9781137402448.
  17. ^ "Davies & Co". Art Gallery of New South Wales. Retrieved 2023-05-13.
  18. ^ "Victorian News". Albury Banner And Wodonga Express Newspaper Archives May 23, 1863 Page 4. 23 May 1863. p. 4.
  19. ^ Prussat, Margrit (15 July 2015). "Carte de visite photography in South America. The mass-produced portrait". In Fischer, Manuela; Kraus, Michael (eds.). Exploring the Archive: Historical Photography from Latin America. The Collection of the Ethnologisches Museum Berlin. Köln: Böhlau. pp. 129–150.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: year (link)
  20. ^ Riches, Harriet (2015). "Picture Taking and Picture Making: Gender Difference and the Historiography of Photography". In Sheehan, Tanya (ed.). Photography, history, difference. Interfaces, studies in visual culture. Hanover, New Hampshire: Dartmouth College Press. p. 131. ISBN 9781611686463. OCLC 880122479.

Bibliography

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