• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • About Me
  • Contact Me
Walking Commentary

Walking Commentary

Thoughts while waiting to walk from Manchester to Rome in 2022

  • ManRom22 Cancelled
  • Latest Comments
  • Archives

Cartes-de-Visite

February 11, 2021 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

I stumbled over a few cartes-de-visite recently without realising what they were. I hadn’t realised that Parisians and Victorians (and the rest of the world) exchanged photographic portraits as calling cards.

Not a CdV but a self portrait from 1894
John Loftus Robinson in Wells
with thanks to RSAI and AASchool.

It seems that this was a social media fad that started in the 1850s and lasted more than forty years. Britannica says it was ‘Immensely popular in the mid-19th century, the carte-de-visite was touted by the Parisian portrait photographer André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri, who patented the method in 1854′.

Wikipedia says they were abbreviated CdV. Of course, it’s as memorabilia of the American Civil War that you most likely know their form. They became the eerie remains of otherwise forgotten soldiers. Tens of thousands of the CdV images survive their 750,000 bodies.

It seems that cartes-de-visites were introduced to England in 1857 when carte portraits of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and their children were published. It started a craze. When you see a picture or Charles Dickens, if the the beard is pouring left and a clump of hair is sprouting right, that’s how he looked in his 1890 CdV.

Here’s a flickr group dedicated to the CdV and there were over 14,000 when I looked on today. Happily, fashions have changed. Sadly, today’s equivalent is often spoiled by a fashion for trout pouts.

There’s an excellent CdV information site here. One particularly compelling image is the calling card for the Siamese twins, Eng and Chang Bunker, taken around 1870 when they were probably 58. They were born in Siam hence the term siamese twins became the name for their conjoined condition. They lived 62 years and left behind 21 children.

Filed Under: Fake Memoir Tagged With: aaschool, jlr, photography, rsai

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Subscribe

You’ve been successfully subscribed to our newsletter!

Recent Comments

  • Simon Robinson on 2023 Subscriptions
  • Catherine Dunne on 2023 Subscriptions
  • Lia Mills on Apertures
  • Lia Mills on Limerick Walls
  • Simon Robinson on Via Graffiti

Categories

  • Anchoritism
  • Chapbooks
  • Fake Memoir
  • ManRom2021

Tags

ahmet altan albert einstein bbc birds bird watching booklink bracket books ireland brian greene burma cancer chapbook colum mccann computing Covid-19 dog dun laoghaire fabhappy flowers food geology geophysics hans rosling ireland irish times issued lia mills london movies nobel prize pandemic PEN international photo photography photos photozines plants poetry popular simonscarves the uplift kit travel ungrievable volcano walking walkingcommentary

Recent Posts

  • Rounded
  • Watershapes
  • Machine Driven
  • 2023 Subscriptions
  • Apertures

Archives

  • January 2023 (1)
  • December 2022 (1)
  • November 2022 (2)
  • October 2022 (1)
  • September 2022 (1)
  • August 2022 (1)
  • July 2022 (1)
  • June 2022 (1)
  • May 2022 (1)
  • April 2022 (1)
  • March 2022 (1)
  • February 2022 (1)
  • January 2022 (2)
  • December 2021 (2)
  • November 2021 (1)
  • October 2021 (1)
  • September 2021 (2)
  • August 2021 (1)
  • July 2021 (2)
  • May 2021 (9)
  • April 2021 (30)
  • March 2021 (31)
  • February 2021 (28)
  • January 2021 (31)
  • December 2020 (31)
  • November 2020 (30)
  • October 2020 (31)
  • September 2020 (30)
  • August 2020 (31)
  • July 2020 (31)
  • June 2020 (30)
  • May 2020 (31)
  • April 2020 (30)
  • March 2020 (31)

Footer

  • Home
  • About Me
  • Contact Me
  • ManRom22 Cancelled
  • Latest Comments
  • Archives

Subscribe

You’ve been successfully subscribed to our newsletter!

Copyright © 2023 · Revolution Pro on Genesis Framework