How an early photographer caputured the town for posterity
He writes. Early photographs were usually printed out as albumen prints where the chemicals for developing the photographic print were bound to the paper with egg white but the backing paper was notoriously flimsy and the expensive prints would often get creased.
This led to the introduction of the ‘Carte de visite’ – usually abbreviated to CdV and was patented in Paris by photographer André Adolphe Eugène Disdéri in 1854, where the thin paper photograph was mounted mounted on a more substantial and thicker paper card.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide AdThe accepted size of a carte de visite is 54.0 mm (2.125 in) × 89 mm (3.5 in) mounted on a card sized 64 mm (2.5 in) × 100 mm (4 in) – the accepted size of a visiting card.