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may have a contribution on these paintings as artists would turn to a of this market, the artist was now a professional working in an open market, opposed to the previous model of being protected by a power-ful patron. Is it possible to connect the bourgeois customers to a very realistic, almost photographic style, present in Dutch painting1?
In the late 18th century there was an attempt to mechanize human portrait. In the 1880’s there was the invention of the physiognotrace 2 , a pantograph like apparatus which made possible to trace a person´s te engravings and printed in multiples. It was a popular process, mostly -in France and the USA and, and be-ing made -in multiples, provides us with an important gallery of late 18th century personalities. According to René Hennequin3
of exploitation (1788-89)4. The physionotrace seems to have been a mostly French and North American phenomenon, mostly as these were societies were bourgeois were gaining a greater political importance.
The main difference from drawing or painting is that the physio-or being, at least, mphysio-ore objective. Painters had also trying to ensure this
5.
The physionotrace does have similarities with latter photographic faithful, than drawing and painting, mere observation and handmade process. This idea would be stronger in all photographic processes, they are supposed to be objective and realistic. Even if there is a whole theoretical production about photography´s objectivity, which we will disregard it at this point; They are also made to be reproduced, as pho-tographic negative/positive processes: The physionotrace is a repro-ductible process, multiples could be ordered by the sitter. It could also
1. Adams, Ann Jensen. Public Faces and Private Identities in Seventeenth-Century Holland: Portraiture and the Production of Community. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
2. Freund, Giséle. Photographie et Société: Paris, Seuil, 1974, pp. 8–18.
3. Hennequin, René. Avant les photographies: Les Portraits au physionotrace gravés de 1788 à 1830. Catalogue nominatif, biographique et critique illustré des deux prem-ières séries de ces portraits comprenant les 1800 Estampes cotées de “1” à “R 27”.
Edition nouvelle illustrée. 1932, Troyes: J.-L. Paton, Imprimeur de la Société Aca-démique de l’Aube, (1932).
4. http://www.lemoinebouchard.com/physionotraces.php
5. Hockney, David. Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters. New York: Avery, 2006.
portrait could be of interest to others.
One important last note on physionionotrace is their uniformity in possible to produce them in variable dimensions, but all have the same pose and the same framing.
Beginnings of photography
and that it became an important practice from very early years. Simul-taneous different inventions in different places would only proof that there was a social need for a fully objective and mechanical (optical) process. Industrial revolution arrived in representation. So, I will not engage in the French versus British invention of photography, on the Niepce/Daguerre, versus Fox Talbot controversy. I might add some of my sympathy for the Brazilian invention and for Hercule Florence.
Partially by better marketing and public relations, but mostly by royalty issues, Daguerre’s process became the most popular photogra-phic process of the 1840’s, it was also better suited to produce portraits.
So the daguerreotype portrait became quite popular, maybe not all that popular, as it was very expensive to produce, more expensive than a miniature portrait.
So, if it was not for price what made daguerreotypes so successful
and luxurious objects with shiny cooper and red (mostly) velvet. They become status symbols, just as painted portraits. Their only fault was the lack of colour, but there was hand painting.
cesses, and by mid-1850’s the ambrotype was one of those, enjoying -a growing popul-arity. They were che-aper th-an the d-aguerreotype, but still expensive, and began replacing it in a few years. This didn´t ha-ppen the same way around the globe and might have been faster in the USA than in Europe. It was a step towards democratization; however, this was still an expensive process, producing one of a kind images.
Same happened with following processes, the tintype, where images were also one of a kind. However, as they were made on an iron sheet, they were much cheaper and one way of popularizing photography and portraits.
And the tintype was indeed popular, particularly in the USA. It was sometimes an attraction at fairs and other local crowd gathering types of cowboys, blacksmiths and other manual professions. These
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might have been used as a proof of success of migrants, being sent to family in Europe.
The Carte de Visite
form of production than a process, as it did not bring nothing new from the chemical point of view. There is a repeated story that it became popular when Napoleon III did make a stop on his way to the Italy mi-litary campaign to make a Carte de Visite at Disdéri studio. It is not a true story, however points to the extreme popularity of the process, and the way it would mix private and public circles.
To be popular the process had to be made cheaper, and that was accomplished without innovations on chemistry or base materials. In-dustrial process and methods came to use, it was a matter of reducing the amount of work needed to make each photograph and producing more images with the same product quantities. A multi lens camera allows to use the same glass plate for several poses. The same plate would be used for 8 photographs, 54 mm x 89 mm, to be mounted on a 64 mm x 100 mm card. This would translate in several poses of the same subject, unlike any other previous forms of portrait. The produc-tion of multiples was similar to what happened with the physiognotra-reproduce the photographs on albumin coated paper which was not so expensive.
The price of the carte de Visite made it a mass-produced item.
It became a bourgeois symbol, anyone with a certain social position should not only have them but give them to his friends and relatives.
It´s popularity led to a rapid expansion through the world, from France to Britain and Germany, passing through Spain and Portugal, it arrived at South America, India or Japan. And never forget the USA. This ex-pansion was fast and wordwide, even being a patented process from 1854.
The Carte de Visite popularity in the 1860’s in France and Britain is known as Cartomania. It lasted a few years and by the 1870’s the larger cabinet card took over on those countries. However, the Carto-mania endured in other countries. In Portugal it is a mostly post 1870 phenomenon, enduring up to 1900. Other South and Eastern European countries could have a similar situation. The same would happen in South America. 6
6. Freund (idem).
Gisele Freund argues that the Carte de Visite is a symbol of the new rising petty bourgeoisie, and a late introduction and a longer per-manence of this format may well be explained with a weaker and less advanced middle class7.
While other popular way of having photographs, the tintype, was a popular, fair like experience, the Carte de Visite was a bourgeois experience. Studios were reminiscent of bourgeois homes with luxu-rious waiting rooms and backdrops. This would, of course be different according to the market they were pointing to. Major cities would have a number of photographers gathering to different publics. To the more
Mayall in London or Mathew Brady in New York, all had photographic studios working mainly to produce Carte de Visite. Studios were in the best part of the cities. Mayall had his in Regent Street, in Lisbon posher studios were in the streets close to the Opera, in Chiado district.
accordingly. Close to train stations if they would try to appeal to peo-ple coming to the city, or in middle class, and even on working class neighbourhoods. As would be expected, going to the photographer and having the picture taken was a practice that started in the upper clas-ses, going to the middle and then to the lower classes. By 1900 having one´s photography was a mandatory practice with the generalization of ID cards.
For the abundance Carte de Visite is most likely what we think
th century portraits, but how would they compare to earlier portraits, to painted portraits of pre-photographic days, to phy-sionotrace, and even previous photographic portraits. They defy all most all previous genres. Full length, head only, seated, standing. Clear -backdrop, elaborate settings, however the backdrops will be painted, and there will be scenic accessories, made to be photographed, having a semi natural look.
This would not mean that they were not stereotypes. This genre of photography is a social tool, having a few mandatory rules8. Mos-tly there is a social statement of bourgeois respectability. Expression, mainly a prerogative of the sitter, and pose, mostly controlled by the photographer had their contribution to this statement.
7.
Lisboa: CEHCP, ISCTE, 2006.
8. Briggs, Asa, A Victorian Portrait: A Record of Victorian Life and Values through Studio Photographs. London: Sheldrake Press, 1989.
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There are several 19th manuals of etiquette9, they would show the image someone would want to present himself to society, and that was translated in the photographs. Full length or head only, mostly in three quarter view persons would be austere, respectable, be shown in their best clothes, however ostentation was forbidden.
Backdrops and accessories should also point in the same direction.
A gentleman should show the pocket watch chain, a lady could have some jewels (not too much), the hand could be on a bible, or other book. A gentleman’s hat could be over a small table, maybe a pot with a countryside landscape and go to wilder settings, castles, lakes with boats with subjects sitting inside a small fake boat. Shelfs of books Portugal, with a conclusion that may be a bit too obvious.
Professional regalia was a matter of higher regarded professions, military, doctors, actors, judges or even students. Contrary to the tin-de Visite portraits.
Carte de Visite would be organized in the family album. This mi-ght be seen as a private matter, however there is an important inter-change of photographs between families. The public sphere does enter the family album by the incorporation of public personalities admired by the family (or by the man in the family). These portraits were sold by photographers, sometimes crossing borders, and often with a very large number of prints. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert portraits mi-quent couple portraits with a seated wife and a standing husband.
-Victoria and Albert could be found on family albums all over Eu-rope and even outside EuEu-rope. Other crowned heads would also be on family albums in theirs’s and other countries. Other personalities like Bismarck were also on widely diffused Carte de Visite portraits. The same would happen with other major 19th century political persona-lities, Garibaldi, Lincoln. Even Engels on Marx death printed 1 000 Carte de Visite which were important on establishing Marx as the most important socialist ideologist. This would be also, from the few known Marx photographs, the one everyone knows. Ironically this was made with a Mayall portrait, same photographer who made some Queen Vic-toria portraits. Carte de Visite were from the very beginning a private artefact, conducing to a personal status statement, but also a political instrument allowing some public personalities a place in the family album.
9. https://archive.org/details/goodmannersmanua00philrich/page/n5
Mandatory photography
Carte de Visite touched a large part of society, there was social pressure to have a picture taken, and to offer it to close people, howe-ver it was not a mandatory process. Mandatory photography would come from the need of controlling the population. First, the dangerous part of society, criminals, insane, the working class, and then the whole society. The photo ID card was born.
Police pictures were a common practice from 1860´s or 1870´s, however in the 1890’s they would gain a science like importance. They would be used as a means of recognition of those who had criminal spotting of a predisposition to crime.
These pictures with a methodology created by Alfred Bertillon were completely standardized and allowed no margin to be controlled features segmented to categories of eyes, ears, mouths … The combi-nation of these features would allow to have a robot portrait drawn, and to have a suspect recognized.
This standardization is quite different from the Carte de Visite ste-reotype which was a product of social pressure but a voluntary process, of control would be either to have or to have not the picture taken. The photographed could choose the photographer, and partially the way the picture would be made. No choices for these police photos. They would be mandatory and made in completely standardized situation, pose, framing and background. These would also have a public, not a private use, as a society control artefact. The power situation is very different, the sitter of a Carte de Visite, or any other studio photograph would be empowered by his choices, and the fact he was paying. In the police photograph having the picture taken would be a symbolic systemization of the gaze where essential for society control. Photo-graphy was (is) a part of the “discipline and punish” system of social control.10
Police photographs were (are) made to be used on a public and are a form of domination of state and society over an individual subjected
10. Foulcault, Michel. Surveiller et punir: La naissance de la prison. Gallimard: Paris, in Les Ombres de l’histoire. Crime et châtiment au XIXè siècle. Paris: Flammarion, 2001, p. 31.
to control. However, photography could be used as a means of con-trolling the whole society with lesser need to create a system of great disempowerment, as with prisoners, but being mandatory would be a form of disempowerment. The sitter would still have some control, even with the imposed limitations on framing, posing and background.
The limitations were the result of standardization of the ID card, and of the need to have a recognizable image. The photographer would take care of these aspects, of background, framing, posing and light.
Sometimes it could be an automatic photographer, like in a Photoma-ton camera which would take care of those standardized characteris-tics. From the 1970’s Polaroid made cameras specializing in ID photos, they would provide standardized distance and light. With 4 lenses to have 4 images in a sheet (for Europe) or with two lenses for the USA,
they were more important as ID cards bloomed from around 1900, up to today. In latest years they would gain the incorporation of it data and microchips were part of the bank card to provide more information, but those are now present in many other cards. The card is a matter
professional cards, transportation cards, bank cards, club cards. Not all would have a photograph, but those who don´t are supposed to be used with a photo card.
They might be somehow unelaborated, and be made for a mandatory use, but they were an attempt to show the sitter at his best. Typically, there would be an order of photographs larger than needed so there were a few photographs assigned to the family album. Photographers would provide sets, including a few larger prints to the album or to dis-play in a frame. Selling albums and frames was part of their business.
Snapshots
During the 20th Kodak could be used as a word for camera, no matter who was the maker. This is rooted in 19th Century last deca-mass-market. With Kodak cameras and facilities for developing and printing of photographs there was a chance to have many photogra-phy practitioners. Photographotogra-phy was now cheaper and easier. Snapshot photography would mean camera and photography could go out of the
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studio, be present in every situation of the common person. Portrait would be made on the public outdoor space, however these were more private, as there was no need to have a photographer as an external element to make the picture.
The Carte de Visite was the way for a large number of people to have their picture taken, the Kodak would mean that those people could take their own pictures. New freedom for location, framing and poses. This would not mean that there were no stereotypes, this would not mean that there are no mandatory locations. These still existed but were enlarged in scope. Travel, beach, birthdays, holydays were part of the new scope for images. The family album and small frames spread around the house will be their exhibition space. They could also be carried in wallets, however, ID photos with their small size are better suited to this purpose.
Private would now mean more private than ever. There was no need to have an external person to take the photographs, there was no there would be only the need to have some professional to develop and print the photos.
Occasion would be the major motivation for photographs. We-ddings (even if these were still the territory of professional photogra-phers), birthdays, holydays would be the main subject of those growing number of people having a camera. Pierre Bourdieu points the presence of children as a major motivation for taking pictures.11 And the cameras would get better, more automated, with a larger “good pictures” rate and being usable in a wider range of situations.
The pertinence of this way of photographing might be seen in the longevity of the Kodak Brownie in production, with very small chan-ges, from 1900 to the late 1950’s and being the subject of millions of copies, made by hundreds of small and big (Agfa, Zeiss…) companies.
possible) were not a huge success as higher price prevented them to be very popular, the huge success came from the combination of ease of use and low price. There were subsequent attempts to produce simple and cheap cameras for everyone updating technology and principles.
The 1960’s and 1970’s, 126 and 110 formats were successful, but this cannot be said for their 1980’s and 1990’s successors the disc and APS.
Ease of use was the keyword, and they were so simple they could be used by children and woman, so Kodak used women as photographers in their advertising, with Kodak girls starting before 1900. There is another reason, women were also the keepers of family matters, and of
11. Bourdieu, Pierre, et al. Un Art Moyen. Paris: Minuit,1965.
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the family album.
Cameras from Brownie to pocket instamatic were the simple and cheap models, but in 100 years of amateur photography there were many different camera families with varying degrees of sophistication, complexity and price. Folding medium format, miniature compact, 35 families, produced in millions.
Most sophisticated amateur cameras could be labelled as sional, and other equipment could give a hint of closeness to profes-using them is certainly a professional, or, at least, someone serious about photography. The amateur could turn on being an expert and going away from family pictures, preferring to do street photogra-phy, nature photographotogra-phy, sports photography. Photographotogra-phy, according to Sontag, would be in every aspect of our life, and there are people specializing in photographing anything we can imagine. Ambition for these expert photographers will be to show their images to a larger au-dience, in other words, going public12.
There were 19th and early 20th century experts, and a whole indus-try to meet their needs. This would go from cameras and chemicals to books and magazines. Amateur Photographer is a British weekly published from 1894.
A different route was the instant photography invention in the late 1940’s. It was for most of the 20th century a single company business (Polaroid) and had the advantage of self-development without the need of sending the images to process and print. Some of great innovations maybe because prices were quite high for consumables. Kodak tried to enter this market in the late 1970’s but was wiped out in a patent war with Polaroid. A variation of instant photography, this time made by Fuji, is hugely popular since the early 2010’s, oddly when digital photography might have solved the issues addressed by instant photo-graphy without the expensive consumables. Not surprisingly Polaroid was the process used in some very private images, as there was no need of other people’s interference.
Family photo albums where having an increased number of pho-tos, of different situations, changed from black and white to colour, but mostly became reserved to family or close friends, there was no lon-ger place for famous persons coming from the political world, as from World War One on they were not highly regarded.
There would be other forms of having famous people photogra-phs home, but outside the family album. Famous people would now
12. Sontag, Susan. On Photography. London: Penguin Books, 1977.