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| This theme includes example sections and will be revised and added to as we proceed. Suggestions for additions, improvements and the correction of factual errors are always appreciated. |
Information requests
10025.01 Card photographs > Improving content on photographic techniques
We are seeking to expand the themes covering photographic techniques and processes. These sections will include:
- Invention of the process
- Any related patents
- Trade literature
- Contemporary advertisements and announcements of the innovation
- A description of the process and its variants
- Historical examples and details of where examples can be located in public collections
- Contemporary examples by photographers using the exact process.
Conservation will not initially be included but may be in the future if required. |
André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri
10025.02 Card photographs > André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri: The innovation of the carte de visite
About this photographer | Photographs by this photographer
      
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André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri became for a time one of the most commercially successful photographers of the nineteenth century. The existing photographic forms of the metal sheet daguerreotype and glass ambrotype were relatively expensive and difficult to copy but when the wet plate collodion process became available producing albumen prints the costs went down rapidly and multiple copies could be easily made. Disdéri saw the opportunity of making multiple photographs, mostly portraits, and affixing the fragile paper prints to a robust card of a standardized size.[1] The purchaser could give these cards as gifts to their friends and acquaintances or use them as or business cards for colleagues and potential customers.
Disdéri patented on 27 November 1854 a method for taking multiple small (101mm x 63mm) card photographs - carte de visite.[2] In the original patent he proposed taking ten photographs on a single sheet that could then be cut an mounted on cards. Some uncut carte devisite sheets by Disdéri survive and these show eight individual images. By using a camera with multiple lenses that could be covered or open it was possible to take eight similar images or a variety of different ones as required.
These were an immediate craze and widely collected and to accomodate and display them the first photograph albums became available.[3] Photographs of celebrities, actors, politicians and royalty sold in the tens of thousands and are still widely available. The carte de visite was primarily used for portraits, less common are landscapes and events - having said this any collector will point out the bewildering variety of subjects and their quirky humour.
The cards could be printed, stamped or written on and this means that the studios and photographers can frequently be ascertained allowing regional listings of those involved to be compiled along with graphical typologies.[4] With photographs using a metallic base material such as Daguerreotypes and Tintypes compiling lists is usually done from trade directories, adverts and contemporary publications.
10025.03 Card photographs > André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri: Uncut carte de visite sheets
About this photographer | Photographs by this photographer
          
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The cameras employed for taking carte de visite often had multiple lenses and by selectively uncovering the lens multiple copies of the same pose or different poses on the same plate could be taken allowing the sitter to select the ones required for printing. After the photograph was taken the wet collodion plate was developed and printed onto a paper sheet using the albumen print process and for André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri[5] examples of these uncut sheets survive. These sheets were used in sample books and on sample boards to allow purchasers to select poses, buy additional prints of their own portrait or those of subjects of interest.
Card stock
10025.04 Card photographs > The card stock used for carte de visites
  
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Adverts for card stock manufacturers
Companies such as A.H. Baldwin and A.M. Collins, Son & Co. in the USA specialized in the manufacture of card stock for carte de visites and supply companies such as E. & H.T. Anthony & Co. supplied printed card stock for photographers.
The back of the card of A.H. Baldwin reads:
This kind of card, light or dark buff not printed, $2.25 per 1000, or 2.75 if Round Corners. All the higher grades of cards printed in this style, $1.00 per 1000. Printed without the cut, 75 cents per 1000.
ANDREW H. BALDWIN,
No. 1 Chambers Street,
Cor. Chatham & Duane, NEW YORK.[6]
Fronts - Portraits
10025.05 Card photographs > Introduction to carte de visite portraits
Charles Dickens understood the stereotypical carte de visite portraits of his time:
I think that a man anxious to obey the precept "Know thyself," might gather much intimate self-acquaintance if he had his carte de visite taken at least once a month—with a life-sized photograph once a year. He should keep the collection, not for public exhibition, but for private contemplation. He should muse over his multiplied effigies, and write marginal notes in the album where they are enshrined. Let there be no touching up, no smoothing away of furrows, no darkening of hair and whiskers. Let him insist on having the real, raw, untampered with, photographs. And, when he winds his way to the operator's studio, let him go in his ordinary costume—unkempt, if it be his custom not to brush his hair—shabby, if he be usually averse from sacrificing to the graces. When he sits or stands, let him assume his natural attitude—or no attitude; which is the most natural one of all. Let him sternly repudiate the traditional book, or pencil, or scroll, and kick away the carefully draped table, the eternal arm-chair, the scene-painted columns, curtain, and balustrade—all the hackneyed "properties" of the photographer. The picture of a man with a wall behind him, is all he needs.[7]
10025.06 Card photographs > Carte de visites: Celebrities
               
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The standardized size of the carte de visite and its robust card-based format allowed for the first photograph albums that encouraged, indeed forced, a display on the pre-cut pages. All previous paper-based forms could be pasted into scrapbooks but carte de visite encouraged the creation of visual family histories and the collection of celebrities. Just as with earlier daguerreotypes of celebrities a similar range of personalities is shown.
Abraham Lincoln was collected and so was actor John Wilkes Booth who would assassinate him in Ford's Theatre in 1865.
   
Abraham Lincoln
Mrs Lincoln & the Ghost of a Spirit [Spirit photograph]
John Wilkes Booth
British Prime Ministers William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli have the rigid poses that remind one of busts and full length sculptures.
British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898)
British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield (1804-1881)
In an age of the printed word authors and poets were popular and Alfred Tennyson, Henry Wordsworth Longfellow, Charles Dickens, Washington Irving and Hans Christian Andersen are all found on carte de visites.
Lord Alfred Tennyson
Charles Dickens
The nineteenth century was the age of colonial empires and explorers such as Henry Morton Stanley led expeditions into Africa that would result in King Leopold's brutal control of the Congo.
Henry Morton Stanley
Carte de visite portraits of celebrities were collected like the cigarette cards, bubble-gum cards and sports cards that would follow. Vast numbers of carte de visite of celebrities were produced and a contemporary account from March 1862 hints at the scale of the craze:
The commercial value of the human face was never tested to such an extent as it is at the present moment in these handy photographs. No man, or woman either, knows but that some accident may elevate them to the position of the hero of the hour and send up the value of their countenances to a degree they never dreamed of.... a new source of income has been opened to first-rate photographers, besides the profit arising from taking portraits. A wholesale trade has sprung up with amazing rapidity, and to obtain a good sitter, and his permission to sell his carte de visite, is in itself an annuity to a man…. The public is little aware of the enormous sale of the cartes de visite of celebrated persons. An order will be given by a wholesale house for 10,000 of one individual—thus 400 pounds will be put into the lucky photographer’s pocket who happens to possess the negative… the Royal Family. Her Majesty’s portrait, which Mr. Mayall alone has taken, sell by the 100,000. …the Prince consort…no less than 70,000 ordered from the house of Marion & Co., of Regent street. This house is by far the greatest dealer in cartes de visite in the country.[8]
By owning a carte de visite of Kit Carson or Admiral Dot one's association with celebrity was brought closer in much the same way that friending a celebrity on Facebook does today. It is a symbol of a real or imagined relationship.
10025.07 Card photographs > Carte de visites: Politicians
    
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10025.08 Card photographs > Carte de visites: French royalty
 
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10025.09 Card photographs > Carte de visites: British royalty
               
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Albumen carte de visite prints of the British Royal Family.
10025.10 Card photographs > Carte de visites: Occupations and roles
                       
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One of the most interesting areas of collecting is that of occupationals and that is because of the personal associations of collectors but also the range of portraits available. Divers, gondoliers, wheelwrights, firemen and traditional healers are all recorded. In each portrait the profession of the person can be determined by clothing, tools or less frequently by the setting. Most occupationals, but far from all, were taken within a photographer's studio with occasionally bizarre results for example in Frederick I. Meryman, Bay State Submarine and Wrecking Co., Boston, Mass. a fully clad deep-sea diver stands on a decorative flooring with a clearly visible skirting board. In another The Seven Heads of the Greek Brigands the decapitated heads are displayed hanging by their hair from a wall.
10025.11 Card photographs > Carte de visites: Military
                
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10025.12 Card photographs > Carte de visites: Ethnic and traditional costumes
                          
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10025.13 Card photographs > Carte de visites: Post-mortem portraits
 
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Fronts - Objects
10025.14 Card photographs > Carte de visites: Objects
                       
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Fronts - Maps
10025.15 Card photographs > Carte de visites: Maps
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Fronts - Advertising
10025.16 Card photographs > Carte de visites: Advertising
                  
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For many photographers there are sets of backmarks on carte de visites[9][10] and cabinet cards that provide temporal series on the different studios of photographers. A combination of these with information from trade directories and adverts in newspapers and other publications create timelines for individual photographers.
       
Samuel A. Cooley: Backmarks
  
Pascal Sebah: Backmarks
     
Hungarian photography studios
10025.17 Card photographs > Carte de visites: Advertising for photographers
  
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André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri (1819-1889)[11] was a French photographer who in November 1854 took out a patent for carte de visite.[12] By affixing albumen prints to cards of a set size he created the first standardized format that was suitable for mass production and dissemination. Carte de visites became a worldwide craze from the 1850s onwards and allowed for the first photograph albums as distinct from scrapbooks. In societies where giving cards to acquaintances and business associates was common the addition of a photograph was a visual reminder that encouraged reciprocity. Disdéri himself took numerous self-portraits that he used to promote his own business.
André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri
Photographers making carte de visites appreciated they could also take advantage of the opportunities for a visual business cards. The cards photographers created were basically of two types the cards showing the range of equipment the photographer had available for use or sale, as the cases of Richard Walzl (Baltimore) and Carlier, and the other was using a collage of photographs showing images for sale.
Richard Walzl (Baltimore): Display of photographic supplies
Carlier: Display of camera, supplies and a photograph
Abraham Bogardus of New York used slightly oversized carte de visites with photomontages of his photographs on the front and promotional copy on the reverse.
     
Abraham Bogardus: Promotional cards
10025.18 Card photographs > Ranger & Austen: Clairvoyant Medical Examinations - Buffum & Cleveland
  
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Send lock of hair and $1.00, with name, age and residence, plainly written, and receive by mail complete diagnosis of disease and advice concerning treatment.
Address
Buffum & Cleveland,
Syracuse, N.Y.
N.B. - The Photograph on the reverse is of Dr. C.T. Buffum, taken while entranced, and showing the controlling power, RED JACKET.
Fronts - Places
10025.19 Card photographs > Carte de visites: Places and landscapes
                           
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Uses of carte de visites
10025.20 Card photographs > J.E. Mayall: Use of carte de visites to support police investigations
About this photographer | Photographs by this photographer
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Contemporary accounts from the nineteenth century reported on how photographs could assist in criminal investigations
The universality of the carte-de-visite portrait has had the effect of making the public thoroughly acquainted with all its remarkable men. We know their personality long before we see them. Even the cartes de visite of comparatively unknown persons so completely picture their appearance, that when we meet the originals we seem to have some acquaintance with them. "I know that face, somehow," is the instinctive cogitation, and then we recall the portrait we have a day or two past seen in the windows. As we all know, the value of the photographic portrait has long been understood by the police, and known thieves have the honour of a picture-gallery of their own in Scotland Yard, to which we shall refer in some future paper; but the photograph is also useful for rogues as yet uncaptured and uncondemned. Thus, when Redpath absconded, it was immediately suspected that a negative of him must be lodged at some of our photographers. The inquiry was made, and one of them was found in Mr. Mayall's possession. An order was given for a supply to the detective force, and through its instrumentality the delinquent, though much disguised, was arrested on board a steamer sailing from some port in the North of Europe.[13]
10025.21 Card photographs > Contemporary uses of carte de visites for employment
  
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The popularity and declining costs of carte de visite[14] brought them within reach of the lower classes in a way that no other photographic type had really done up to that point. There are many photographers who took portraits or studies of the working class but it was the photographer who controlled what was taken, how posed, and where it would be shown or marketed. The subject rarely had a say it it. With the carte de visite it was the sitter who commissioned the portrait, could possibly have a say in the pose, took away the finished photograph and distributed them as required. This meant that for the first time it became possible for an employer to ask for a photograph to accompany a job application and we can find examples of this including:
Temperance agent (1870):
TEMPERANCE AGENT WANTED. - The Dumfriesshire and Kirkcudbrightshire Abstainers' Union wish to engage an Agent, qualified to advocate Abstinence principles, in their varied aspects and applications, by means of Lectures, Sermons, Visiting, &c. Salary, £130 sterling per annum. - Application, with testimonials and carte de visite, must be lodged, on or before, 16th February, 1870, with James Rodgers, Hon. Sec., 127, High-street, Dumfries.[15]
Medical Officer (1886):
Wanted, Medical Officer for the Hartlepools Friendly Societies Medical Association; must be fully qualified. - Apply, giving age and references, and enclosing carte-de-visite and testimonials, to T. Tweddell, Reed-street, West Hartlepool.[16]
Tuner and canvasser (1889):
TUNER and CANVASSER. Gentlemanly young man, with experience, WANTED, for the Country. Enclose carte-de-visite. State wages and references. H. Jackson, Messrs. Novello, Ewer and Co., 1, Berners Street, W.[17]
Fronts - Memorials
10025.22 Card photographs > Carte de visites: Memorial portraits
       
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Fronts - Manipulated
10025.23 Card photographs > Painted carte de visites
                       
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10025.24 Card photographs > Carte de visites: Multiple exposures
               
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10025.25 Card photographs > Carte de visites: Photomontage
                  
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10025.26 Card photographs > C.W. Applegreen creates a composite photograph
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This rare carte de visite series shows photographer C.W. Applegreen preparing a composite photograph along with the fruit of his labour.
Etiquette
10025.27 Card photographs > Carte de visites: Etiquette
Duffey, E.B., 1877, The Ladies' and Gentlemen's Etiquette: A Complete Manual of the Manners and Dress of American Society (Philadelphia: Porter and Coates), p. 175
No person of taste will display his or her photograph upon a carte de visite
Cameras
10025.28 Card photographs > Carte de visite cameras
   
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10025.29 Card photographs > A contemporary thought on the properties, accessories and novelties used in 19th studios
 
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A piece in the 1862 The Photographic Journal being the Journal of the Photographic Society captured the difficulty with the selection of studio props:
There is always too much of the studio in these carte de visite portraits. We do not merely refer to the extraordinary backgrounds which some of these operators employ. Why a respectable old lady is to be represented as sitting without her bonnet in a chair placed upon a Brussels carpet in the middle of a terraced garden, is always very perplexing; and it is equally difficult to understand what the foundation can be for the theory, which seems to have possessed the minds of several of the photographers, that the middle-aged men of England generally spend their lives leaning against a Corinthian pillar, with a heavy curtain flapping about their legs, turning their backs to a magnificent view, and obviously standing in a frightful thorough draught.[18]
The point is well made and the situation becomes increasingly bizarre when the symbols of western civilization, such as Greek columns, were used as studio props around the world and we see Krooboys / Cabindas resting on a column[19], an anthropological Portrait of Two Men, Ainu from Saghelieu, Both in Costume, One with Earring in front of an inappropriate western painted studio background[20] and a semi-naked Aboriginal group photographed by Courret Hermanos posed in front of a background of a western house interior complete with that "heavy curtain".[21]
  
Backs
10025.30 Card photographs > Carte de visites: Backs: Additional products
          
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The back of a carte de visite offered marketing opportunities for the photographer or publisher to promote additional products and services. On the reverse of a carte of The Bass Rock in Scotland George Washington Wilson provided a description of other "views of Scottish scenery", the locations photographed, sizes, formats and that they were available as "Souvenirs and Gift books".
Established 20 Years
G.W. Wilson
Landscape Photographer
24 Crown St,
Aberdeen
Card, Stereoscopic, Cabinet
and other sizes of views of Scottish scenery sold by all the leading booksellers, and the principal Railway book stalls in Scotland.
Sets of views of Edinburgh, Trossachs, Melrose, Abbotsford, Stirling, Dunkeld, Balmoral, Staffa & Iona, Glencoe, Skye etc. in Green cloth covers for Souvenirs and Gift books.
Book illustrations in Permanent Heliotype[22]
In this short passage he also provides information that his photographs can be purchased at "leading booksellers, and the principal Railway book stalls in Scotland." highlighting that they are widely available and a part of a burgeoning tourist market.
On other cards such as one by C. Duhem & Bro., Photographic Artists of Larimer St., Denver, Colorado, they claimed:
We have constantly on hand a large assortment of Photo Albums, Fancy Frames, and beautiful Ambrotype Cases; also Photographs on Porcelain.[23]
Many photographers highlighted significant series that they had available. David F. Barry of West Superior, Wisconsin had:
Photographs of All Noted Indians,
Catalogues Mailed on Application[24]
J.G. Vail of Geneva, N.Y. offered "Photographs of all sizes taken and finished in India Ink, Oil or Water Colors" and the "Old Pictures copied to any size".[25] On the cards of William Friese-Greene he gave tuition on photography and would photograph your lawn tennis club along with numerous other services.[26] The back of the carte de visite was where the photographer could enhance their business opportunities and they did it with enthusiasm taking advantage of local opportunities. On the carte de visites of Mountford he stated that he had "A large assortment of Views of the Ruins, suitable for Mailing, constantly on hand." seeing the devastation of the Chicago fire as topical.[27]
10025.31 Card photographs > Carte de visites: Backs: Change of business ownership
 
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10025.32 Card photographs > Carte de visites: Backs: Diverse occupations
  
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10025.33 Card photographs > Carte de visites: Backs: Product promotion
  
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10025.34 Card photographs > Carte de visites: Backs: Whimsy
      
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10025.35 Card photographs > Carte de visites: Backs: Women photographers
  
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Backs - Studios
10025.36 Card photographs > Carte de visites: Backs: Photographic studios
        
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10025.37 Card photographs > Carte de visites: Backs: Photograph cars
  
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Backs - Patronage and awards
10025.38 Card photographs > Carte de visites: Backs: Royal patronage
     
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10025.39 Card photographs > Carte de visites: Backs: Awards
            
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Backs - Services
10025.40 Card photographs > Carte de visites: Backs: Negatives preserved, copies made and enlargements
         
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10025.41 Card photographs > Carte de visites: Backs: Teaching available
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10025.42 Card photographs > Carte de visites: Backs: Elevator available
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In the early days of light within the studio was essential and this was usually achieved by having the studio on the top floor of the building with glass skylights and blinds for control. Needed to ascend flights of stairs was a necessary requirement but it also discouraged customers. The Otis Elevator Company was founded in Yonkers, New York, in 1853[28] which is interestingly the year before André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri took out his patent for the carte de visite in France. Before elevators the height of a building was limited by the number of stairs a person was willing to climb. As ever taller buildings with elevators became available this offered canny photographers a marketing advantage and so the backs of carte de visite highlighted this.
Backs - Motifs
10025.43 Card photographs > Carte de visites: Backs: Catalogue pages
  
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Printers had stock designs that could be printed on the fronts and backs of carte de visite and some examples of their catalogues have survived. The analysis of the graphic elements is still relatively new and Mark Chalabala's book American Backmark: The Art and Artistry of the Carte de Visite Imprint 1860-1890 (2013) is a useful guide.[29] carte de visite were a global phenomena and so regional analysis still needs to be carried out.
10025.44 Card photographs > Carte de visites: Backs: Shared graphic motif
      
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10025.45 Card photographs > Carte de visites: Backs: Landscapes
 
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10025.46 Card photographs > Carte de visites: Backs: Belt buckle
 
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10025.47 Card photographs > Carte de visites: Backs: Transportation
 
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10025.48 Card photographs > Carte de visites: Backs: Egyptian motifs
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10025.49 Card photographs > Carte de visites: Backs: Graphics that place photography with the arts
    
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Carte de visite[30] were photographs mounted on to card and this allowed the photographer a means of marketing their studio with logos, names and addresses within a small area beaneath the image if the image was a portrait mode and on the back of the card.[31] The entire back of the card ("backmarks") was limited only by the technical abilities of the printer and the imagination and requirtements of the photographer. As photography was viewed as a technical process performed by operators some photographers wanted to provide a direct linkage to the visual arts, particularly painting, and this was done through the symbols of easels, palettes, paint brushes and the wording selected such as "Photographer artist". Photographic studios offered artistic additional services including "portraits in crayon" or "photographs of all sizes taken and finished in India Ink, Oil or Water Colors".
Tissue covers
10025.50 Card photographs > Tissue covers
Tissue covers were sold by supply houses and manufacturers to protect the photographic surface of carte de visites and the larger cabinet cards. In England the Percy Lund & Co, "Price list of consumables for the professional photographer"(December 1897) included:
Tissue covers carte de visite white 4d per 1000, pink 9d per 1000. Cabinet white 9d per 1000, pink 1/- per 1000[32]
Frames
10025.51 Card photographs > Photograph frames for carte de visites
      
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Albums
10025.52 Card photographs > Carte de visite and cabinet card photograph albums
                                                              
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10025.53 Card photographs > Directions for inserting cards into carte de visite albums
  
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When carte de visite were new on the market directions were provided on how to place them in albums and this rare card is an example of that.
Directions
Be careful to cut the Photographs to the exact size and shape of THIS CARD, so as to correspond with the space cut out to receive them.
Should they be too long, they will swell one end of the Album and prevent it from clasping. To facilitate their removal, insert a paper cutter or broad bladed knife beneath the Card, so as to raise the lower edge, grasp them both with the thumb and fore-finger and withdraw the Card and knife at the same time.
It was probably an album of carte de visites or cabinet cards that Anna Karénina is looking at and having difficulty in removing a photograph from the great novel by Leo Tolstoy:
Anna opened a locket containing Serozha's picture at the same age as his sister; then, taking off her hat, she looked in an album for other pictures of him taken at different periods; she wanted to compare them, and she took them all out of the album. One was left, the last, the best photograph of him. It represented Serozha astride a chair, in a white frock, a smile on his lips, and a shadow in his eyes; it was a perfect likeness of his best expression. Holding the album in her little deft hands, which to-day moved with extraordinary effort, she tried with her slender white fingers to take it from its place; but the photograph stuck, and she could not get at it. There was no papercutter on the table, and she took up another photograph at random to push out the card from its place.[33]
10025.54 Card photographs > Examples of filler cards in carte de visite albums
               
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To encourage reciprocity in the giving of carte de visite special filler cards were produced to be inserted into albums often as the first or last card where the wording requested that the person viewing the album should not fail in their duty to present a card for inclusion. Examples of these cards include.
Yes here is my album,
But learn ere you look
That all are expected
To add to my book.
You are welcome to quiz it
The penalty is -
You add your own portrait
For others to quiz.
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Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot.
And Never Brought To Mind?
While I've An Album To Contain
The Friends of "Auld Lang Syne".
Then Gie's Ye're "Carte"
My Trusty Friend,
And Here's A "Carte" O' Mine.
We'll Fill Our Albums To The End
Wi' The Friends
Of "Auld Lang Syne".
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Hail to the photographic art!
Which such pure pleasure can impart
Depicting on the album's page,
From babyhood to hoary age,
The forms which our best love engae.
Hail science, hail inventive mind!
With happy skill all this combined,
To furnish forth a pure delight,
Aiding the mem'ry through the sight,
And bringing cherish'd forms to light.
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Or the rather more straight forward German version
Bitte Bitte dein Bild [Please please your picture].
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I wish my album to contain the old familiar faces
and valued friends they'll here find welcome places
and hope you'll not intrusive deem the request that now I make
a portrait true or each dear friends I ask for friendship's sake
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I am no robber but a cavalier
and in a friendly cause do here appear
Your portraits wanted for this book of beauty
So give it! Or I'll do my duty!!
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Now you've seen my whole collection
Just pause a moment for reflection.
Young and old, great and small,
Absent friends, I want you all.
If not here, give me your carte
Another book I then shall start
And, if this one has not space
Let volume Two contain your face.
Finis
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Footnotes
- Λ Elizabeth Anne McCauley, 1985, A. A. E. Disderi and the Carte de Visite Portrait, (New Haven: Yale)
- Λ William Culp Darrah, 1981, Cartes De Visite In Nineteenth Century Photography, (Gettysburg, Pa.: William C. Darrah); Thomas Harris, 2013, ‘The Mighty, Yet Diminutive, Carte de Visite‘, in Bryan & Page Ginns, 2013, Antique Photographica: The Collector's Vision (Schiffer), pp. 100-120; Elizabeth Anne McCauley, 1985, A. A. E. Disderi and the Carte de Visite Portrait, (New Haven: Yale)
- Λ Andrea Volpe, 6 August 2013, "The Cartes de Visite Craze", The New York Times - Opionionator
(Accessed: 6 August 2013)
opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/the-cartes-de-visite-craze
- Λ Mark S. Chalabala, 2013, American Backmark: The Art and Artistry of the Carte de Visite Imprint 1860-1890, (Privately printed)
- Λ Elizabeth Anne McCauley, 1985, A. A. E. Disderi and the Carte de Visite Portrait, (New Haven: Yale)
- Λ In the Isenburg Collection at the Archive of Modern Conflict (AMC) in Toronto there is a rare carte de visite with an advertisement for Andrew H. Baldwin a supplier of card stock.
- Λ Charles Dickens, 20 June 1863, "The Philosophy of Yourself", All the Year Round, no. 217, pp. 392-393
- Λ A. Wynter, 1 March 1862, "Cartes-de-Visite.", Saturday Evening Post, p. 3. [From Once a Week].
- Λ William Culp Darrah, 1981, Cartes De Visite In Nineteenth Century Photography, (Gettysburg, Pa.: William C. Darrah); Thomas Harris, 2013, ‘The Mighty, Yet Diminutive, Carte de Visite‘, in Bryan & Page Ginns, 2013, Antique Photographica: The Collector's Vision (Schiffer), pp. 100-120; Elizabeth Anne McCauley, 1985, A. A. E. Disderi and the Carte de Visite Portrait, (New Haven: Yale)
- Λ Mark S. Chalabala, 2013, American Backmark: The Art and Artistry of the Carte de Visite Imprint 1860-1890, (Privately printed)
- Λ Elizabeth Anne McCauley, 1985, A. A. E. Disderi and the Carte de Visite Portrait, (New Haven: Yale)
- Λ William Culp Darrah, 1981, Cartes De Visite In Nineteenth Century Photography, (Gettysburg, Pa.: William C. Darrah); Thomas Harris, 2013, ‘The Mighty, Yet Diminutive, Carte de Visite‘, in Bryan & Page Ginns, 2013, Antique Photographica: The Collector's Vision (Schiffer), pp. 100-120; Elizabeth Anne McCauley, 1985, A. A. E. Disderi and the Carte de Visite Portrait, (New Haven: Yale)
- Λ The article "Cartes de Visite" was also published in Once a Week, Volume 6, Jan 25, 1862, pp. 134-137 and in The Living Age, Volume 72, 1862, p. 676
It was also published in - Andrew Wynter, 1869, Subtle brains and lissom fingers: Being some of the chisel-marks of our Industrial and Scientific Progress. And Other Papers, (Third edition, London: Robert Hardwicke), pp. 310-311
- Λ William Culp Darrah, 1981, Cartes De Visite In Nineteenth Century Photography, (Gettysburg, Pa.: William C. Darrah); Thomas Harris, 2013, ‘The Mighty, Yet Diminutive, Carte de Visite‘, in Bryan & Page Ginns, 2013, Antique Photographica: The Collector's Vision (Schiffer), pp. 100-120; Elizabeth Anne McCauley, 1985, A. A. E. Disderi and the Carte de Visite Portrait, (New Haven: Yale)
- Λ The Temperance Record: The Organ of the National Temperance League, no. 723, February 5, 1870, p. 71.
- Λ The Lancet, The Lancet General Advertiser, August 28, 1886, p. 42.
- Λ The Musical Times, October 1, 1889, p. 581.
- Λ 15 December 1862,"Cartes de Visite of Celebrities", The Photographic Journal being the Journal of the Photographic Society, no. 128, p. 188
- Λ José Agusto da Cunha Moraes, Krooboys / Cabindas, [Africa Occidental Album Photographico - Litterario por C. Moraes S, Ferreira], 1880 (ca), Albumen print, Private collection of Manuel Magalhaes
- Λ Bronislaw Pilsudski, "Portrait of Two Men, Ainu from Saghelieu, Both in Costume, One with Earring", 1909,
Photographic print, 5 x 6 ins (image) 8 x 10 ins (mount), National Museum of Natural History, Image ID: NAA INV 07034900
- Λ Courret Hermanos, "An Aboriginal group", 1868 (ca), Carte de visite, National Library of Australia, nla.pic-vn3510476
- Λ Collection of Michael G. Jacob
- Λ Private collection of Alan Griffiths
- Λ Newberry Library, Edward E. Ayer Photograph Collection, Call Number: AP 628, Box 39
- Λ Courtesy of Anthony Davis - Antiq-photo / Rainbow creations (www.19cPhoto.com)
- Λ Private collection of John Toohey
- Λ Private collection of Alan Griffiths
- Λ Otis - A Visual Timeline
(Accessed: 30 March 2014)
www.otisworldwide.com/d31-timeline.html
- Λ Mark S. Chalabala, 2013, American Backmark: The Art and Artistry of the Carte de Visite Imprint 1860-1890, (Privately printed)
- Λ William Culp Darrah, 1981, Cartes De Visite In Nineteenth Century Photography, (Gettysburg, Pa.: William C. Darrah); Thomas Harris, 2013, ‘The Mighty, Yet Diminutive, Carte de Visite‘, in Bryan & Page Ginns, 2013, Antique Photographica: The Collector's Vision (Schiffer), pp. 100-120; Elizabeth Anne McCauley, 1985, A. A. E. Disderi and the Carte de Visite Portrait, (New Haven: Yale)
- Λ Mark S. Chalabala, 2013, American Backmark: The Art and Artistry of the Carte de Visite Imprint 1860-1890, (Privately printed)
- Λ "Price list of consumables for the professional photographer", December 1887, The Photographers World
Percy Lund & Co, Bradford, England
(Accessed: 2 January 2014)
sites.google.com/site/leedsandbradfordstudios/home/percy-lund
This item was brought to my attention by Michael Hocken in a reply to a question raised by Tony Rackstraw on the "British photographic history" website
britishphotohistory.ning.com (2 January 2014)
- Λ Leo Tolstoy, 1886, Anna Karénina, (T.Y. Crowell & Company), ch. XXXI, p. 541. Translated by Nathan Haskell Dole.
alan@luminous-lint.com |
 
General reading
Boyd, T., 2000, Portraits in Sepia. From the Japanese Carte de Visite Collection of Torin Boyd and Naomi Izakura, (Tokyo: Izakura & Boyd) [Δ]
Chalabala, Mark S., 2013, American Backmark: The Art and Artistry of the Carte de Visite Imprint 1860-1890, (Privately printed) [Δ]
Darrah, William Culp, 1981, Cartes De Visite In Nineteenth Century Photography, (Gettysburg, Pa.: William C. Darrah) [Δ]
Hannavy, John, 1997, Victorian Photographers at Work, (Risborough: Shire Publications Ltd) [Δ]
Harris, Thomas, 2013, ‘The Mighty, Yet Diminutive, Carte de Visite‘, in Bryan Ginns & Page Ginns, 2013, Antique Photographica: The Collector's Vision (Schiffer), pp. 100-120 [Δ]
Lansdell, Avril, 1985, Fashion à la Carte 1860-1900, (London: Shire Publications) [Δ]
Mathews, Oliver, 1974, The Album of Carte-de-visite and Cabinet Portrait Photographs 1854–1914, (London: Reedminster Publications, Ltd) [Δ]
McCauley, Elizabeth Anne, 1985, A. A. E. Disderi and the Carte de Visite Portrait, (New Haven: Yale) [Δ]
Thomas, G., 1984, ‘Indian Courtesans in Cartes-de-Visite‘, History of Photography, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 83-88 [Δ]
Wichard, Robin & Wichard, Carol, 1999, Victorian Cartes de Visite, (Shire;) isbn-10: 0747804338 isbn-13: 978-0747804338 [Δ]
Readings on, or by, individual photographers
Hermann Krone
Hesse, Wolfgang, 1998, Hermann Krone: Historisches Lehrmuseum Für Photographie. Experiment, Kunst, Massenmedium, (Dresden: Verlag der Kunst) [Δ]
Bohumil Stepán
Stepán, Bohumil, 1971, Bohumil Stepán: Familienalbum. Collagen, (Munich: dtv) [Δ]
Charles Waldack
Waldeck, Charles, 1862, The Card Photograph: An Appendix to the Third Edition of a Treatise on Photography, (H. Watkin) [Δ]
If you feel this list is missing a significant book or article please let me know - Alan - alan@luminous-lint.com
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| Carte de visite
Title | Lightbox | Checklist
Released (May 30, 2006) Includes sections on royalty, celebrities, occupations and uncut sheets. | | Carte de visite: Backs
Title | Lightbox | Checklist
Released (May 1, 2006) | | Carte de visite: Celebrities
Title | Lightbox | Checklist
Released (June 23, 2006) |  | Carte de visite: Cultural curiosities and the novel idea
Title | Lightbox | Checklist
Released (March 23, 2007) |  | Carte de visite: Occupational
Title | Lightbox | Checklist
Improved (September 14, 2006) | | Carte de visite: Royalty
Title | Lightbox | Checklist
Released (June 23, 2006) |  | Carte de visite: Storage and display
Title | Lightbox | Checklist
Released (June 6, 2006) | | Carte de visite: Uncut sheets
Title | Lightbox | Checklist
Released (March 18, 2011) |  | The Commercial Portraiture of Camille Silvy
Title | Lightbox | Checklist
Released (August 3, 2006) | | |
Photographer
| | | |  | Frank Rowell: Carte de visite with tax stamp
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| | | | | | | | |  | W.L. Germon: Backmarks
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Techniques
| Carte de visites: Backs: Additional products
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| | Carte de visites: Backs: Belt buckle
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| | Carte de visites: Backs: Catalogue pages
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| | Carte de visites: Backs: Change of business ownership
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| | Carte de visites: Backs: Diverse occupations
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| | Carte de visites: Backs: Egyptian motifs
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| | Carte de visites: Backs: Elevator available
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| | Carte de visites: Backs: Graphics that place photography with the arts
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| | Carte de visites: Backs: Landscapes
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| | Carte de visites: Backs: Medals and prizes won
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|  | Carte de visites: Backs: Missing studio details
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| | Carte de visites: Backs: Negatives preserved, copies made and enlargements
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| | Carte de visites: Backs: Photograph cars
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| | Carte de visites: Backs: Photographic studios
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| | Carte de visites: Backs: Product promotion
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| | Carte de visites: Backs: Royal patronage
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| | Carte de visites: Backs: Shared graphic motif
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| | Carte de visites: Backs: Teaching available
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| | Carte de visites: Backs: Transportation
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| | Carte de visites: Backs: Whimsy
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| | Carte de visites: Backs: Women photographers
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| | Carte de visites: Cameras
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| | Carte de visites: Card stock
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|  | Carte de visites: Decorative mounts
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| | Carte de visites: Embossed paper mounts
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|  | Carte de visites: Mirrorscopes
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| | Carte de visites: Painted
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|  | Carte de visites: Proof stamps
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|  | Carte de visites: Storage and display
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| | Carte de visites: Themes: Advertising
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|  | Carte de visites: Themes: Art
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|  | Carte de visites: Themes: Backgrounds
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|  | Carte de visites: Themes: Charitable causes
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|  | Carte de visites: Themes: Copies of earlier photographs
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| | Carte de visites: Themes: Crime
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| | Carte de visites: Themes: Directions for albums
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| | Carte de visites: Themes: Double and multiple exposures
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| | Carte de visites: Themes: Employment
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|  | Carte de visites: Themes: Erotica
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| | Carte de visites: Themes: Ethnic and traditional costumes
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| | Carte de visites: Themes: Filler cards in albums
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|  | Carte de visites: Themes: Front and backs
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|  | Carte de visites: Themes: Helping hand
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| | Carte de visites: Themes: Marketing
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| | Carte de visites: Themes: Military
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|  | Carte de visites: Themes: Mobile photographic studios
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| | Carte de visites: Themes: Objects
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| | Carte de visites: Themes: Occupationals
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| | Carte de visites: Themes: Photograph frames
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|  | Carte de visites: Themes: Photographer tents
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|  | Carte de visites: Themes: Photographers
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|  | Carte de visites: Themes: Photographic studios
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| | Carte de visites: Themes: Photographica
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| | Carte de visites: Themes: Photomontages
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| | Carte de visites: Themes: Places and landscapes
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| | Carte de visites: Themes: Portrait: Actors
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|  | Carte de visites: Themes: Portrait: African Americans
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|  | Carte de visites: Themes: Portrait: Artists
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| | Carte de visites: Themes: Portrait: Celebrities
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|  | Carte de visites: Themes: Portrait: Native Americans
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|  | Carte de visites: Themes: Portrait: Royalty
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| | Carte de visites: Themes: Post-mortem
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|  | Carte de visites: Themes: Sports and pastimes
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|  | Carte de visites: Themes: Strange
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|  | Carte de visites: Themes: Universal Exhibition of 1867 in Paris
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| | Carte de visites: Uncut sheets
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|  | Carte de visites: Viewers
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|  | Carte de visites: Vignettes
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| | Two versions of the same carte de visite with different colouring
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Private collections
 | Collection Laddy Kite: Multiple exposures
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|  | Collection Laddy Kite: Photomontages
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|  | Collection Laddy Kite: Transportation
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| | The Isenburg Collection @ AMC Toronto: Carte de visites
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Still thinking about these...
| 4-tube Carte de Visite Wet Plate Camera
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|  | Artistic group
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|  | Book-like storage for card photographs
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| | Card photographs of actors, performers and entertainers
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|  | Carte de visites: Different imprints
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|  | India and the carte de visite
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|  | Carte de visites: The Union Matrimonial Promoter
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|  | Copying photographs and copyists: Portraits of young girl (Carte de visite - Tintype)
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|  | Japanese carte-de-visite and cabinet card album
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| | Trott & Co. (Boston, publisher): John C. Thomas, Dealer in Hats, Caps, Furs, and Gentlemen's Furnishing Goods
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Refreshed: 13 January 2015, 00:33 |
LuminousLint 
@LuminousLint
