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André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri
Disdéri self-portrait
1858-1862
Carte de visite
Paul Frecker
LL/13381
The probable inventor of the carte-de-visite, Disdéri received a patent for the process from the French government on 27 November 1854, and was certainly responsible for popularising the craze. Remembered for having been the first to establish photography as a business as well as an artistic craft, his contemporaries considered him the outstanding portrait photographer in France. Although at the height of his career he was reputed to be earning a phenomenal é48,000 a year, in January 1872 he filed for bankruptcy. He subsequently found new backers and re-established a studio, at first in Paris and then at various addresses in Nice during the 1880's. For some reason, around 1888 or 1889, he left the agreeable climate of Nice and returned to Paris. He died on 4 October 1889 at the age of seventy, in the H¶pital Sainte-Anne, an institution for indigents, alcoholics and the mentally ill.
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