The phenomenon of "Cardomania" that raged in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth decreed the success of the format Carte de
Visite as a means of identification and social recognition of the bourgeoisie
and the affluent middle class in Victorian times.
Del mechanism exchange that allowed to collect in the
album collection of portraits of relatives, friends and acquaintances, I wrote
in the previous article on the carte de visite
Photographs format carte de visite
( carte-de-visite abbreviated as CdV or CDV )
are a kind of calling
card photo that enjoyed enormous popularity in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth century...
carte-de-visite or carte de ville
The success of this
portrait genre founded on the novelty and convenience of a product photo again,
able to perform the function of a means of identification and social
recognition.
The rising middle class, he found an effective
solution to the desire for self-celebration and affirmation of the attributes of
the class and the individual personality.
The normal size of a carte de visite is about
54.0 mm (2.125 in) × 89 mm (3.5 in) for the 'photographic image printed on paper
compact and thin. This primary support was mounted, usually hot, on a
card rather consisting of 64 mm (2.5 in) × 100 mm (4 in). The positive is usually
printed on albumen paper.
The oldest examples may have been made on salted
paper.
The CdV later are made with collodion processes, aristotipia or other processes,
sometimes technically refined and rare.
Not infrequently the CdV was hand-dyed.
The Parisian
photographer André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri (Paris, March 28, 1819 -
OCTOBER 4 1889) patented in 1854 the method to get eight different negatives on
a single plate. This determined size which characterizes the Cdv and
that made possible the successful thanks to the reduction of production costs.
The negative
could be printed by contact and the production of copies was therefore
particularly convenient. The format was soon to establish itself in the first
few years, until the day when the Emperor Napoleon III made him stop the
troops leaving for the Italian campaign (II Italian War of Independence) 8 of
the Boulevard des Italiens to be portrayed by Disdéri.
The episode is riposrtato
in memories of the photographer Nadar, pseudonym under which he is known
Gaspard-Félix Tournachon (Paris, April 6, 1820 -
March 21 1910). The intention was probably to promote and celebrate
the image of the emperor, spreading the knowledge of the physical appearance of
the whole people, the troops and the Allies.
Disdéri was selling
copies of the most famous people of his time and he gladly welcomed in his
studio.
His
picture taken by this photographer meant the consecration of its financial
success, artistic or political.
So all those who could afford it wanted to be
photographed in Cdv, then giving it to friends, acquaintances and admirers, a
copy of his portrait. The success of the format carte de visite swept
triggering the mechanism of chain reaction that was at its base:
I gift
my CdV to you, you CdV your gifts to me .
In this way we were with a decent speed large
collections of carte de visite that implicated the statement of special photo
albums in windows. In these containers were gathered portraits of
family, friends and acquaintances, thus becoming a sort of " family
atlas "which allowed the recognition of mutual ties,
roles, expectations and social identifications.
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