Contextual notes:
André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri became one of the most commercially successful photographers of the nineteenth century. He appreciated that by making numerous small portraits the purchaser could give them as gifts to their friends and colleagues - to do this he patented on 27 November 1854 a method for taking multiple small (101mm x 63mm) portraits. These became known as Carte-de-visite and were an immediate craze with people collecting them in albums. Photographs of famous people, actors, politicians and aristocrats sold in the tens of thousands and are still widely available. |
