Carte de visite

[F.]

1. A visiting card.

2. A photographic picture of the size formerly in use for a visiting card.

carte de visite, photographic print format roughly the size of a French visiting card (6 × 9 cm; 2 1/3 × 3 1/2 in), traditionally imprinted with the name of its bearer. First patented by the Parisian photographer André Disdéri in November 1854, the carte format was undoubtedly inspired by stereoscopic photographs taken with twin-lensed cameras from c. 1850. (Disdéri's carte camera incorporated four lenses and an ingenious sliding plate holder.) While the purpose of stereoscopic images was to simulate depth when viewed in a specially designed stereoscope, Disdéri's motivation was purely economic: in the time it took to produce one full-plate wet-collodion negative and one large contact-printed positive, one could expose, develop, and print many (ten as described in the 1854 patent, but eight in surviving uncut sheets) small photographs that could be mounted on thin cards.

Although there is no evidence that Disdéri envisioned a stylistic change in the resultant portraits, in effect the use of faster lenses with shorter focal lengths allowed greater flexibility in posing and encouraged full-length rather than bust views. As documented in an article in La Lumière on 28 October 1854 that may have prompted Disdéri's patent registration, the wealthy amateurs Édouard Delessert and Count Olympe Aguado had already begun experimenting with visiting-card-sized portraits that showed figures tipping their hats, holding their gloves, and dressed appropriately to the visit being made. Such fashionable people, concerned about their public self-presentation in the grand new spaces of Haussmann's Paris, became the first clients for the tiny portraits by c. 1857. Members of Napoleon III's court and boulevard actresses flocked to Disdéri's and other studios to preen themselves before the camera in their evening crinolines, morning dresses, or various degrees of déshabillé.

The craze for cartes de visite and the special albums manufactured to hold them spread from Europe to the rest of the world between the late 1850s and the 1870s, with the format considered outmoded in Paris by c. 1867. As carte cameras were acquired by provincial operators, prices dropped to one franc per dozen, permitting truly working-class consumption. Carte formats were also used for tintypes, which could be inserted in the same albums as images mounted on card, or safely sent through the post.

Although the format was used for landscape and topographical views, and occasionally for scenes of contemporary events, it remained predominantly a portrait medium. Marking a shift from the scrutiny of the face to the reading of the entire body, cartes gave sitters the freedom to reveal multiple identities before the lens, and anticipated the snapshot in expanding the repertoire of poses in which people were displayed. They were also exploited in celebrity series which flooded the market with hundreds of thousands of portraits of Queen Victoria, Napoleon III, or Abraham Lincoln. By placing heads of state on the same page as members of ordinary families, the carte album evoked, if it did not quite effect, a social levelling consistent with the professed political goals of liberal nation-states.

— Elizabeth Anne McCauley

Bibliography

• Darrah, W., Cartes de Visite in Nineteenth-Century Photography (1981).
• McCauley, E. A., A. A. E. Disdéri and the Carte de Visite Photograph (1985).
• Wichard, R. and C., Victorian Cartes de Visite (1999).
• Hamilton, P., and Hargreaves, R., The Beautiful and the Damned: The Creation of Identity in Nineteenth-Century Photography (2001)

French Carte de visite of Nadar

The carte de visite or CDV (also carte-de-visite) was a type of small photograph which was patented in Paris, France by photographer André Adolphe Eugène Disdéri in 1854.^[1] It was usually made of an albumen print, which was a thin paper photograph mounted on a thicker paper card. The size of a carte de visite is 2⅛ × 3½ inches mounted on a card sized 2½ × 4 inches. It was made popular in 1859 in Europe, and from 1860 in the United States. The new invention was so popular it was known as "cardomania"^[2] and eventually spread throughout the world. In 1854, Disdéri had also patented a method of taking eight separate negatives on a single plate.

Each photograph was the size of a visiting card, and such photograph cards became enormously popular and were traded among friends and visitors. The immense popularity of these card photographs led to the publication and collection of photographs of prominent persons. "Cardomania" spread throughout Europe and then quickly to America. Albums for the collection and display of cards became a common fixture in Victorian parlors.

By the early 1870s, cartes de visite were supplanted by "cabinet cards," which were also usually albumen prints, but larger, mounted on cardboard backs measuring 4½ by 6½ inches. Cabinet cards remained popular into the early twentieth century, when Kodak introduced the Brownie camera and home snapshot photography became a mass phenomenon.

Contents 1 The American Civil War 2 Gallery 3 References 4 External links

The American Civil War

The carte de visite photograph proved to be a very popular item during the American Civil War. Soldiers, friends and family members would have a means of inexpensively obtaining photographs and sending them to loved ones in small envelopes. Photographs of Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and other celebrities of the era became an instant hit with the public. People were not only buying photographs of themselves, but also photographs of celebrities.

Carte de visite of Booth; around 1863, by Gardner

Gallery

One of the first Carte de visite of Queen Victoria taken by Photographer John Jabez Edwin Mayall	Two examples of carte de visite photographs taken during the American Civil War. Each soldier shown here served with the 77th Illinois Volunteer Infantry.	Carte de visite of Sojourner Truth. She sold these to raise money (see inscription).	The only known photograph of Mary Seacole, taken for a carte de visite by Maull & Company in London in c.1873.
Carte de visite of Sim D. Kehoe, who brought Indian clubs to the United States from England.	CDV of Seth Kinman taken by Matthew Brady	CDV of a chair presented by Kinman to Abraham Lincoln. Kinman sold these CDVs in the U.S. Capitol.

References

1. ^ Welling, William. Photography in America (1978 & 1987)
2. ^ Newhall, Beaumont. The history of photograph (1964)

External links

• Matthew Brady, Father of Photojournalism
• Portraits of Scientists: Increase Lapham's Cartes-de-visite Collection Collected by pioneering Wisconsin antiquarian Increase Lapham between 1862-75, this album of carte-de-visite photographic portraits depicts many notable 19th-century scientists from America and Europe. Available on Wisconsin Historical Images, the Wisconsin Historical Society's online image database.
• University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections – 19th Century Actors Photographs Cartes-de-visite studio portraits of entertainers, actors, singers, comedians and theater managers who were involved with or performed on the American stage in the mid- to late 1800s.
• Gettysburg College Nineteenth Century Notables Digital Collection
• William Emerson Strong Photograph Album -- Duke University Libraries Digital Collections 200 cartes-de-visite depicting officers in the Confederate Army and Navy, officials in the Confederate government, famous Confederate wives, and other notable figures of the Confederacy. Also included are 64 photographs attributed to Matthew Brady.

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