Napoléon Coste
Medium
Albumen print
Dimensions
Image/paper: 20 × 23.3 cm (7 7/8 × 9 3/16 in.)
Classification
photograph
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
188833
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
In 1854 the Parisian photographer André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri introduced a method for producing multiple images on a single glass-plate negative. He also produced more portable studio portrait format: the carte-de-visite, which consists of a small portrait mounted on rigid paper stock about the size of a business card. The uncut contact sheet displayed here features eight different views of a single sitter. It comes from a reference album that Disdéri kept in his studio for reprint requests. Th...
About the Artist
André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri · 1819–1889
**André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri** (1819–1889) was a pioneering French photographer whose innovations transformed portraiture into a mass medium during the Second Empire. Born on March 28, 1819, in Paris, Disdéri pursued diverse careers in commerce, acting, and politics early on, while studying art amid personal hardships following his father's death, which compelled him to support his mother, sibli...