Perhaps strangest of all, this and many other photographs in the gallery are cartes de visite, intended to be left as calling cards and collected.
The word "Visite," referring more to the action of traveling or wandering rather than the arrival to a final destination is also an idea that I explore in many of my video works.
A precursor of the photo-booth technique, it essentially democratized photography with small, cheap, multiple portraits, creating a rage for collecting and exchanging these so-called cartes de visite that came to be known as cardomania.
Requests can be sent in English by fax to Ufficio Visite Guidata, at (39) 06 69 88 5100.
Along the way, Browne provides memorable glimpses of scores of figures and institutions, including the postal system ("the pre-eminent collective enterprise of the Victorian period"), a publishing scene dominated by subscription-based lending libraries, the world of water cures and fashionable maladies, and the fad of cartes de visite at the dawn of celebrity photography.
Cartes de visite, a forerunner of sorts to trading cards, featured images of famous military and political figures and other celebrities, such as actors, as well as ordinary soldiers and civilians.
There was a fad for portrait-bearing cartes de visite, and it was customary for new enlistees to visit a portrait studio before heading off to war.
In regard to his personal appearance, qualifications and character, the advertiser prefers to say nothing — a carte de visite, the contemplated correspondence and the future will disclose all that is necessary or desirable to be known on the subject.... Address Charles P. Hanover, First New York Mounted Rifles, Suffolk, Va.
Away from the Comédie-Française, Duchaussoy played in Shakespeare, Shaw, Pirandello and Pinter in Paris and in the provinces, and created the role of a gay man dying of Aids in Une Visite Inopportune (An Inopportune Visit) by the playwright Copi (Raúl Damonte Botana) in 1987.
Silvy took the carte de visite, in which one put a face to one's name, and turned it into a mass-production industry.
