The carte de visite (CdV or carte-de-visite) is a type of photograph popular from the mid-1850s in Europe and from 1860 in America. Usually an albumen print, the carte de visite is a photograph measuring 2.125 x 3.5 inches mounted on a card sized 2.5 x 4 inches. The carte de visite was developed in 1854 by Parisian photographer Andre Disdéri who patented a method of taking eight separate negatives on a single plate. Each photograph was the size of a visiting card, which were at the time an enormously popular item traded among friends and visitors. The enormous popularity of these photos-as-calling-cards led to the publication and collection of photographs of prominant persons. Card mania spread through Europe and then America, and albums for the collection and display of cards became a common fixture in Victorian parlors.

By the late 1860s, cartes de visite had been supplanted by "cabinet cards," which were also usually albument prints, but larger, mounted on cardboard backs measuring 4.5 by 6.5 inches. These remained popular into the early twentieth century, when Kodak introduced the Brownie camera and home snapshot photography became a mass phenomenon.

Photographic processes | Ephemera

Fotografická vizitka | Visitenkartenporträt