The third spin-off from collodion was the carte de visite, or visiting card. A number of photographers claimed credit for introducing the carte de visite, but the idea was patented by André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri (1819–1889) and introduced to the public in Paris in 1854. [2|4|5|887]Additional examples:
 
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LL/29561 LL/29675 LL/13381 

The concept of using photographs on documents such as licenses, passports, permits, and visiting cards was proposed by Louis Dodero of Marseilles in 1851. The carte de visite, or carte, was a 2 1/4 x 3 1/2-inch photograph, usually a full or bust-length portrait, mounted on a 2 1/2 x 4-inch paper card. A number of exposures were made with a multilens camera on a single collodion wet-plate and were contact-printed onto albumen paper. Individual exposures were cut apart and mounted on cards. The multilens, referred to as tubes, could be individually uncovered (there were no shutters), making possible a variety of poses on a single plate. The intent was to take the time and expense needed to make one print and divide it by many prints, reducing the cost of each unit. Numbers were the deciding factors; the more cartes people had made, the greater the photographer’s profit. Enhanced savings were also realized since retouching was not needed, as many defects were not noticeable in the small prints, and the processing procedures could still be performed by unskilled labor. Daguerreotypists like Abraham Bogardus initially dismissed the carte. Bogardus recalled his first impressions of the carte as "a little thing; a man standing by a fluted column, full length, the head about twice the size of the head of a pin. I laughed at that, little thinking I should at a day not far distant be making them at the rate of a thousand a day." [2|4|5|888]Additional examples:
 
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LL/9873 LL/9874 LL/9875 
LL/9798 LL/31518 LL/32935 
LL/9951 LL/9952 LL/9950 
LL/9949 LL/30997 LL/30998 
LL/29704 LL/29705 

After a slow start the carte became a hit in May 1859 when legend has it that Napoleon III, leading his army out of Paris on a military campaign against Austria, stopped to have a publicity portrait made at Disdéri’s studio. It proved a successful public relations tactic for both men as people flocked to have their carte made at the same place as the emperor. Disdéri became a celebrity and was appointed Court Photographer. In 1860 Disdéri redecorated his studio, the "Palace of Photography," in the ornate Second Empire style with portraits of della Porta, Niépce, Daguerre, and Talbot along with allegorical statues signifying Chemistry, Painting, Physics, and Sculpture. The Apotheosis of Light was painted on the ceiling. By 1861 Disdéri was reported to be the richest photographer in the world, eventually opening branch studios in London, Madrid, and Toulon. His Paris studio had a staff of 90, could make thousands of prints a day, and promised 48-hour delivery. [2|4|5|889]Additional examples:
 
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LL/13385 LL/11258 

The carte did not become chic in England until August 1860, when John Jabez Edwin Mayall (1813–1901), who learned daguerreotypy working in a Philadelphia gallery and returned home to become one of London’s most elegant studio photographers, published his Royal Album, consisting of fourteen carte portraits of the royal family. Hundreds of thousands of cartes of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were sold, leading to an explosion of celebrity photographs. Photographers courted personalities to sit for them, often paying a fee to the sitter and/or royalties based on sales. The practice of collecting and exchanging photographs and placing them in embellished, manufactured albums began with the Royal Album cartes. Mayall’s carte business reportedly generated more income than any other English photographer’s, with his studio turning out a half million cartes a year. Mayall also patented the Ivorytype in 1855, a method in which a photographic image was printed on artificial ivory that had been sensitized with either albumen or collodion. This imitation effect was popular as it played off the association of ivory as a valuable object reserved for the power elite. [2|4|5|891]Additional examples:
 
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LL/5917 LL/5916 LL/5923 
LL/5918 LL/11230 LL/22320 

The royal family itself was keen on photography. Queen Victoria was said to have over one hundred photo albums, many arranged and inscribed by Prince Albert. The Queen enjoyed giving and sending photographs. The royal family not only consented to the sale of their cartes but commissioned numerous portraits, collected contemporary photographs, were patrons of The Photographic Society, and even had a darkroom installed at Windsor Castle for their private use, increasing interest in photography and giving it status and credibility. [2|4|5|892]Additional examples:
 
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LL/12019 LL/5917 LL/5918 
LL/11160 LL/12788 LL/5920 
LL/12020 LL/12018 LL/33133 
LL/22018 
 

YouTube id: cNynbJmJrYc

The carte was a formula picture; no particular effort was made to reveal the sitter’s character. Even though posing equipment was still required, shorter exposure times allowed more naturalistic styles to evolve, and people appeared less rigid and stern. In various poses controlled by the photographer, from vignetted heads whose undefined edges merged into the background to full-length images, the sitter could look either directly at the camera or gaze off to one side. The backgrounds could be neutral, or they could be elaborate painted settings. Most scenes included props, such as fancy upholstered chairs, balustrades, columns, drapery, and furniture. People often wore clothes or held objects that revealed their status or their aspirations. Cartes were personal, hand-held portraits made to be preserved in albums and stir memories: "This is what I look like, this is what I do, this is who I am." [2|4|5|893]Additional examples:
 
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LL/11990 LL/12069 LL/12070 
LL/4153 LL/6904 LL/4152 
LL/10618 LL/11989 LL/33486 
LL/19972 LL/33132 

Cartes of royalty, actors, politicians, and people in the news were widely circulated. In 1861, the Chicago & Milwaukee Railroad Co. issued identity cartes for their season-ticket holders. Abraham Lincoln credited his election to his Cooper Union speech and to his carte made by Mathew Brady. Stage figures, such as Maggie Mitchell with her trademark mischievous gamine/ urchin role, became cult personalities in the United States through the publicity supplied by their cartes. Besides celebrities there was a market among the educated for cartes of authors, such as Charles Dickens, George Sand, and Victor Hugo. In addition, leaders of reform movements, including the American abolitionists Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beecher Stowe, were in demand. [2|4|5|895]Additional examples:
 
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LL/11961 LL/10892 LL/32631 
LL/11257 LL/11256 LL/12368 
LL/31525 LL/12370 LL/13452 
LL/6264 LL/11962 LL/33134 

Cartes catered to the armchair traveler with views of moated castles and foreign lands, to the sophisticated with works of art, to the believers of "Manifest Destiny" with bare-breasted natives who could be both ogled and looked down on, and to the morose with "freaks of nature" like a person with no arms who could write with his feet. Cartes provided the realistic images the public now expected at affordable prices and furthered the picturing of more diverse subjects. [2|4|5|896]Additional examples:
 
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LL/22351 LL/32643 LL/32941 
LL/32940 LL/11254 LL/32949 
LL/14946 LL/32942 LL/33136 
LL/32303 LL/11974 LL/10904 
LL/10901 LL/94 LL/13265 
LL/11363 

Typically, the front of the carte had the photographer’s name imprinted below the image, and for celebrity and other public portraits, which most cartes were not, a caption and statement of copyright were added. Many of the backsides carried advertising logos that generally included the photographer’s and/or publisher’s name and address. Additional notes reminded the public that copies of the carte could be reordered, with pronouncements such as: "Negatives preserved, Duplicates can be had at any time." [2|4|5|897]Additional examples:
 
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LL/9824 LL/9873 LL/9388 
LL/11965 LL/42540 LL/9413 
LL/9392 LL/9397 LL/9404 
LL/9406 LL/9408 LL/9410 
LL/11976 

Some of the cartes that are most interesting as social documents were peddled as fundraisers. One carte of three small children stated that: [2|4|5|898]

As cartes were not deemed inviolable objects, the public joined the titling process, adding inscriptions to the backside, or verso, of the cartes, anticipating the role that snapshots and postcards have often served. A carte of a dapper young man asked: "Please acknowledge the receipt of this by returning one of yours. J. Crane." A middle-aged man thought his image was worth many cartes: "Aunt Susan, you must be sure and send me some of all of you as soon as you can. Me." Others provided factual information about the sitter: "Ma when 16." Still others offered commentary: "The arch traitor Jeff Davis." A woman in a long dress, holding a straw hat, wondered whether it was really possible to be known through one’s carte. On the verso she wrote: "Do you know me?" A piercing example of the reality of war can be seen in a Civil War portrait album that contains brief penciled comments recording each person’s name and what happened to him: "killed at . . . , wounded at . . . , lost leg, died of wound, eye shot out at . . . , lost arm." A portrait of four soldiers in uniform, with devil-may-care looks, was inscribed: "All killed in battle." [2|4|5|902]

The carte fad peaked about 1866, and as the fad began to decline photographers such as Edward Wilson bemoaned the change and searched for something else to reinvigorate declining sales: [2|4|6|904]

The answer to this dilemma came in the cabinet photograph, essentially an enlarged carte designed for portrait work. The name predates photography and may refer to the fifteenth and sixteenth century Augsburg cabinets that were produced for well-to-do bourgeois to hold collectible items or the small cabinet canvases made by the Dutch and Flemish painters for merchants’ houses. The cabinet card format was introduced in 1862 by Marion & Co. of London with the publication of a series of 6 3/4 x 4 1/2-inch views by G. W. Wilson. The format gained popularity when F. R. Window’s London studio applied it to making portraits in 1865–1866. The increased image size showed more detail and was considered more aesthetically gratifying than the smaller carte. In the United States, the carte did not yield ground until the early 1870s. However, as time passed the cabinet swept the portrait field, and photographic suppliers began to make new card mounts and albums as the collecting mania that had faded with the carte craze began anew. [2|4|6|906]Additional examples:
 
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LL/6247 LL/32712 LL/31308 
LL/30983 LL/28235 LL/11950 
LL/22003 LL/17465 LL/31309 
LL/14208 LL/31317 LL/31321 
LL/15303 LL/11549 LL/22004 
LL/12988 

Cabinet pictures were made in a method similar to the carte. The glass plate for the negative was first coated with a thin layer of albumen and the collodion was flowed on. Next, the plate was sensitized in a silver nitrate bath. It was exposed while still moist and was immediately developed in an acetic-acid/iron-sulfate solution that also contained alcohol, silver nitrate, and nitric acid, and was fixed with potassium cyanide. The completed negative was often varnished to prevent the thin collodion film from being scratched. Prints were made on albumenized stock that was commercially available in several surface finishes. The paper too had to be sensitized before printing by floating it, albumen side down, in a bath of silver nitrate. The paper was sometimes fumed with ammonia after being sensitized, in order to increase its speed. The negative and paper were placed in a printing frame and exposed in sunlight. Next the paper was toned with gold chloride to give it a brown appearance and was fixed in hypo, washed, and dried. The cabinet was offered in three sizes: No. 1, 5 1/4 x 4 inches (the most popular); No. 2, 5 3/4 x 4 inches; and Special, 6 x 4 1/4 inches. All were mounted on a 6 1/2 x 4 1/4-inch card. [2|4|6|907]

The cabinet created a demand for larger pictures.³ [2|4|6|908]Additional examples:
 
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LL/11366 LL/30981 LL/30982 
LL/12980 LL/6250 LL/10968 
LL/11369 LL/32129 LL/23468 
LL/31321 LL/10962 

The increase in image size changed the photographic viewing experience from an intimate affair to a public display on a mantle or wall. The bigger sizes provided photographers with more space to orchestrate, and new aesthetic possibilities could be realized as light and pose were used to reveal a sitter’s character. As the image’s size and cost increased, the public paid closer attention to what was happening within the frame. These changes in turn encouraged photographers to push the boundaries of the portrait to express each sitter’s character. [2|4|6|909]Additional examples:
 
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LL/10975 LL/10976 LL/12049 
LL/11060 LL/7406 LL/31602 
LL/13270 LL/28288 LL/12050 
LL/11164 LL/20504 LL/20499 

The cabinet style peaked with the collecting of stage personalities in the 1880s. Its decline began at the turn of the twentieth century as folding cameras, with which people could make their own postcard-size pictures, gained popularity. By World War I the cabinet had just about vanished from the commercial scene. [2|4|6|910]Additional examples:
 
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LL/12056 LL/8157 LL/11165 
LL/6637 LL/14238 LL/28290 
LL/12356 LL/28287 LL/28286 
LL/19723 LL/14254 LL/14259 
LL/11271