Vol. 2 - May - No. 27
Carte de Visite
The carte de visite was an inexpensive photographic portrait mounted on a card of about 2 ½ x 4 inches. It was commonly used as a calling card. Invented in France by Alphonse-Eugène Disdéri in 1854, it was introduced into America a few years later. The carte de visite caused a sensation, even inspiring a song, The Carte-de-Visite Album, and it soon became fashionable to leave them when calling on friends. Albums were sold for these photographs and collecting pictures in this form became quite a fad. Cartes de visite of famous persons, such as Abraham Lincoln, and Spanish tenor Julián Gayarre, were also available and very popular.The carte de visite photo was an outgrowth of the wet plate collodion process which rendered a glass negative from which paper prints could be made relatively easily. The formerly popular daguerreotype process gave a positive image, but since there was no negative, it could not be mass reproduced. In making a carte de visite photo, a wet collodion plate was used for an exposure which ranged from 3 to 30 seconds. Photographers used a multiple-lens camera and shot many exposures on one plate by changing its position. The prints were large and the separate negatives were small. Prints were made on specially sized albumen paper, a printing-outpaper, which was exposed to sunlight. A final gold chloride toning gave them their familiar brownish look.
Carte de visite photos usually depicted the subject standing with head rigidly held by a brace. Often persons were posed before an elaborate background, holding a column base or the back of a chair. Nevertheless, the carte de visite had an important effect on the history of photography in the long run, as it led to greater overall freedom in portraiture.
learn more about this fascinating subject:
Roger Vaughan's Carte de Visite site
History of Photography: Carte de Visites
Small Worlds: The Art of the Carte de Visite
Carte de Visite Wet Plate Camera, c.1860s
Popular History of Photography: Carte de Visites
James Wadsworth Civil War photograph album
