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[Studio Portrait: Self-Portrait Standing by a Mirror]

1860s
Not on view
The carte de visite, a format comprised of an approximately 2 x 4 inch photograph mounted to card stock, was perhaps the most ubiquitous of nineteenth-century photographs. The French studio portrait photographer André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri first patented the carte in 1854. His innovation of exposing not just one but eight photographic images on the same glass plate negative enabled cartes to be made cheaply and reproduced on a mass scale. During the late 1850s and throughout the latter half of the century, these economical keepsakes depicting portraits of loved ones, celebrities, monarchs, and foreign types circulated en masse and spurred a veritable "cartomania." Collected in albums, traded among friends, and admired in drawing rooms, cartes put photography in the hands of virtually everyone, and thus offered a means of reflecting upon one’s own social standing in an ever-expanding world.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: [Studio Portrait: Self-Portrait Standing by a Mirror]
  • Artist: Pierre Petit (French, Aups 1832–1909 Paris)
  • Date: 1860s
  • Medium: Albumen silver print
  • Dimensions: Image: 9.4 x 5.6 cm Mount: 10.6 x 6.3 cm
  • Classification: Photographs
  • Credit Line: Gift of Drew Knowlton and William L. Schaeffer, 2017
  • Object Number: 2017.68.45
  • Curatorial Department: Photographs
More Artwork
Portrait of Richard Wagner, Pierre Petit  French, Lithograph after a photograph
After Pierre Petit
Sitter Richard Wagner
after 1861
Ceramic Horn, Glazed pottery, French
French
late 18th or early 19th century
[Studio Portrait: Male Street Vendor Standing in Profile Holding Basket, Brazil], Christiano Junior  Portuguese, active Argentina, Albumen silver print
Christiano Junior
Publisher Georges Leuzinger
1864–66
[Studio Portrait: Self-Portrait Wearing Plaid Pants and Overcoat], Pierre Petit  French, Albumen silver print
Pierre Petit
1860s
Moulin Rouge: La Goulue, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec  French, Lithograph printed in four colors; three sheets of wove paper
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Printer Affiches Américaines, Charles Lévy
1891

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