Cartomania: Celebrity, Deception and Identity

As part of the RPS Historical Group's look at historical collections of photography, photographic archives, and those working historical and alternative processes this talk looks at the carte-de-visite and cartomania through the collection of Paul Frecker. It is hosted by Dr Michael Pritchard FRPS.
Cartomania was a photographic phenomenon that seized the British public’s imagination at the beginning of the 1860s. The format enjoyed a popularity of such epidemic proportions that for a while it became the dominant medium of visual culture. Innumerable articles in the photographic press trumpeted its ascendancy, while several commentators mentioned the crowds that formed to ogle the displays of cartes in stockist’s windows, to the extent that pavements were blocked and traffic impeded. Paul Frecker’s talk will look at some of the lesser known aspects of the format’s cultural impact, specifically the market for celebrity portraits, the problem of access to celebrities and the format’s tendency to obscure class distinctions.
Paul Frecker began collecting cartes-de-visite in 2001 when he came across an album in a local antiques market. That one fortuitous find eventually led to him become a dealer in vintage photographs, specialising in cartes de visite. In 2009 he published an article on Camille Silvy in History of Photography and in 2011 he graduated from Birkbeck with an MA in Victorian Studies. He has just published a major new book Cartomania: Photography and Celebrity in the Nineteenth Century.
If you have enjoyed this talk why not consider joining the RPS's Historical Group and support online talks and live visits to archives and collections of photography across the United Kingdom? The Group also publishes The PhotoHistorian three times a year.

[@chriscard6544]

awesome

[@frederick3467]

Excellent talk, Im interested in Elliott and Fry

[@paulfrecker]

Love E&F. They crop up three or four times in my book. They're in the chapter on Courtesans - for some weird reason they seem to have been the working girls studio of choice! And they're in the chapter on photographers in the bit where I compare the size of the estates that various photographers left when they died. (They were at the top of the league table!)