Dic: carte de visite

1. http://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/carte

Carte de visite, p. ell. carte. : Petit rectangle de carton imprimé portant le nom d'une personne, souvent son adresse, parfois sa profession et ses titres.


2. http://100.nate.com/dicsearch/pentry.html?s=B&i=137931&v=43

명함판사진[ 名銜判寫眞, carte-de-visite ] 명함 주인의 사진을 인쇄하여 명함을 대신하도록 만든 사진.

19세기 중반에 굉장히 유행했으며 파리의 초상 사진가 앙드레 아돌프 외젠 디스데리(1819~90?)가 처음 만들었다. 그는 1854년 4개의 렌즈가 달린 명함판사진 카메라에 대한 특허를 받았는데, 그 카메라는 규격 사이즈의 원판으로 가로 5.69㎝, 세로 8.44㎝ 크기의 음화 필름 8장을 만들어낸다. 원판대로 나온 큰 인화지를 잘라서 만든 값싸고 작은 초상화들을 대략 가로 6.5㎝, 세로 10㎝ 크기의 명함에 붙인다.

명함판사진은 프랑스의 나폴레옹 3세가 디스데리에게 포즈를 취해준 이후 일시적으로 유행했으며 생일이나 경축일에 교환되기도 했고, 빅토리아 여왕 시대에는 명함판사진 앨범이 사교계에서 일반화되었다. 미국 남북전쟁 기간 동안 M. B. 브래디 등의 사진가들은 워싱턴 D. C.와 뉴욕시티에서 이 사업을 번창시켰다. 1860년대 이후로는 명함판사진에 대한 유행이 사라졌다. 유명인사와 왕족의 명함판사진들은 수집가들의 수집대상으로 남아 있다.

3. A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE CARTE DE VISITE

Carte de Visite  photographs--small albumen prints mounted on cards 2-1/2 by 4 inches--were wildly popular and made for decades in countries around the world. The format was an international standard; for the first time, relatives and friends could exchange portraits, knowing they would find a place in the recipient's family album--whether that album was located in Brooklyn, Berlin or Brazil. In addition, unlike earlier photographs made with such processes as the daguerreotype and ambrotype, cartes de visite could be sent through the mail without the need for a bulky case and fragile cover-glass. Their small size also made them relatively inexpensive, and they became so widespread that by 1863 Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes would write, "Card portraits, as everybody knows, have become the social currency, the 'green-backs' of civilization."

The predecessors of cartes de visite were calling cards. During the 1850s, it was the custom to present one's calling card at the time of a social visit. These cards were smaller than today's business cards, frequently consisting of a name engraved and printed on glossy stock; in later years, designs became more elaborate. Families would often provide decorative baskets or trays to receive calling cards from visitors. During the 1850s, there were sporadic reports of photographers in the U.S. or Europe preparing photographic calling cards, in which the portrait replaces the engraved name. The example shown here is a rare survivor: a salt print 1-7/8 inches tall on glossy card stock, 2" x 3-1/4". Other early salt print calling cards vary in size.

The standard 2-1/2" x 4" format was patented by a Parisian photographer, Andre Adolphe Disderi, in 1854. Through the use of a sliding plate holder and a camera with four lenses, eight negatives could be taken by Disderi's method on a single 8" x 10" glass plate. That allowed eight prints to be made every time the negative was printed. Not all photographers followed this method, however. And Disderi's format did not become popular until five years after he patented it. One persistent story, now discredited, said the Emperor Napoleon III was marching the French Army to Italy when he suddenly halted his troops and entered Disderi's studio to pose in uniform for his carte de visite, touching off the craze. Cartes were introduced in New York, probably by C. D. Fredericks, late in the summer of 1859. The American Civil War gave the format enormous momentum as soldiers and their families posed for cartes before they were separated by war--or death.Queen Victoria compiled more than a hundred albums of cartes, featuring royalty and others of social prominence. In England, sales of cartes de visite ran in the hundreds of millions, annually.
The vast majority of cartes depict individuals or couples posed in the studio; the small size of the format appears to leave little room for more complex subject matter. But perhaps out of necessity (for example, a frontier photographer limited to a single camera), cartes de visite were also made of groups and landscapes and even as pioneering examples of photojournalism. Sometimes it seems as if the early photographers who made these small images were trying to capture the world around them on a tiny patch of paper and cardboard. Judging their work more than a century later, it can be argued that in many cases they succeeded.

4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carte_de_visite

5. Websters online

French Carte de visite
of Nadar

Note: in French, carte de visite refers to business card or visiting card.

The carte de visite or CDV (also carte-de-visite) was a type of small photograph which was patented in Paris, France by photographer André Adolphe Eugène Disdéri in 1854.^[1] It was usually made of an albumen print, which was a thin paper photograph mounted on a thicker paper card. The size of a carte de visite is 2.125 × 3.5 inches mounted on a card sized 2.5 × 4 inches. It was made popular in 1859 in Europe, and from 1860 in the United States. The new invention was so popular it was known as "cardomania"^[2] and eventually spread throughout the world. In 1854, Disdéri had also patented a method of taking eight separate negatives on a single plate.

Each photograph was the size of a visiting card, and such photograph cards became enormously popular and were traded among friends and visitors. The immense popularity of these card photographs led to the publication and collection of photographs of prominent persons. "Cardomania" spread throughout Europe and then quickly to America. Albums for the collection and display of cards became a common fixture in Victorian parlors.

By the early 1870s, cartes de visite's were supplanted by "cabinet cards," which were also usually albumen prints, but larger, mounted on cardboard backs measuring 4.5 by 6.5 inches. Cabinet cards remained popular into the early twentieth century, when Kodak introduced the Brownie camera and home snapshot photography became a mass phenomenon.

The American Civil War and CDVs

The carte de visite photograph proved to be a very popular item during the American Civil War. Soldiers, friends and family members would have a means of inexpensively obtaining photographs and sending them to loved ones in small envelopes. Photographs of President Abraham Lincoln, General Ulysses S. Grant, and other celebrities of the era became an instant hit with the public. People were not only buying photographs of themselves, but also photographs of celebrities.

According to an interview by Alexander Gardner to Harper's Weekley in February 1865, his most popular Carte de visites were of, ironically, John Wilkes Booth and Abraham Lincoln. After the Assassintaion of Abraham Lincoln, Booth's Carte de visite sold like never before. Now, a very rare item, a Carte de Visite of Booth sells for about $1,500.00 each at auction. ^[3]

Carte de visite of Lincoln; February 5th, 1865, by Gardner

Carte de Visite of Booth; Around 1863, by Gardner

Gallery

Two examples of carte de visite photographs taken during the American Civil War. Each soldier shown here served with the 77th Illinois Volunteer Infantry.

Carte de visite of Sojourner Truth. She sold these to raise money (see inscription)

The only known photograph of Mary Seacole, taken for acarte de visite by Maull & Company in London in c.1873.

References

1. Welling, William. Photography in America (1978 & 1987)
2. Newhall, Beaumont. The history of photograph (1964)
3. The Antiques Roadshow

External links

• http://www.mathewbrady.com
• Portraits of Scientists: Increase Lapham's Cartes-de-visite Collection Collected by pioneering Wisconsin antiquarian Increase Lapham between 1862-75, this album of carte-de-visite photographic portraits depicts many notable 19th-century scientists from America and Europe. Available on Wisconsin Historical Images, the Wisconsin Historical Society's online image database.
• University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections – 19th Century Actors Photographs Cartes-de-visite studio portraits of entertainers, actors, singers, comedians and theater managers who were involved with or performed on the American stage in the mid- to late 1800s.
• Gettysburg College Nineteenth Century Notables Digital Collection