A.A.E. Disderi and the Carte de Visite Portrait Photograph

📖 The Scoop

"The carte becomes a unique means for McCauley to examine the social and cultural life of the mid-nineteenth-century French middle class - their morals and manners, fashions and obsessions. McCauley finds that the cartes became a great equalizer, allowing bourgeois Parisians to examine, and, in effect to bring into their living rooms, the famous politicians, actors, dance-hall girls, and writers in the photographs. The carte also gave the bourgeoisie the opportunity to dress in their Sunday best and record their own lineage, just as the well-to-do had done for centuries in painted portraits. McCauley shows that the proliferation of the carte had a marked effect not only on society but also on portrait painting, especially on the styles and compositions of young artists such as Manet, Degas, Monet, and Renoir"--Page 2 of cover.

Genre: No Category (fancy, right?)