Carte de Visite

In 1859, André Adolphe Eugène Disdéri popularized the Carte de Visite, or visiting card, in Paris when he published photos of Emperor Napoleon III. When calling at someone’s house, a visitor would present a small card (about 2.5x4 in.) with a photograph of themselves on it to a servant to announce their presence to the host. The Carte de Visite utilized the first commercially viable negative-positive process, the albumen print.

A photographer would first take the portrait of the subject, which oftentimes took such long exposure times that subjects would have to wear elaborate braces to hold them still from 10 seconds up to around a minute. The image was recorded on a glass plate, unlike the previous Daguerreotype and tintype that used metal plates. From here the photographer could either coat the back of the glass to make an ambrotype or use the plate as a negative to print onto paper for things such as the Carte de Visite. The paper was first coated with a mixture of egg whites and salt to provide a base for the light-sensitive silver nitrate, which was applied next. Then the glass plate negative was laid on top of the paper and exposed in direct sunlight. With this process, countless photographs could be made from the one negative, and this allowed for cheap production of many Cartes de Visite for subjects to leave with friends.



Carte de Visite of William Tecumseh Sherman
taken by Alexander Gardner, date unknown