Alison Hearn, cartes de visite, 23 January 2012

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Alison Hearn

  • Media studies, U of Western Ontario
  • 23 January 2012

Newer work, part of book project - pre-history of self-branding

  • Journal of Consumer Culture, Continuum, Ephemera
  • In Brand Culture book: "Brand Me Activist"

On the Carte de visite

"How does the self come to present itself as economic value?"

Celebrity/self-branding

  • Fame is number one aspirational value among tweens
  • Google number, Klout
  • Personal disclosure

"Card-o-mania", 1861-1870s

  • Carte de visite
  • Collected into albums
  • Mapping out relationships, networks

Processes of commodified self-production

  • Self-narrative
  • Marketing, branding are central (paradigmatic)
  • Affective, expressive labor

"The branded self"

Production of cartes du visite

  • Photographic method, A. A. Disderi
  • 1 exposure, 4 images
  • First paper photograph, mounted on cardstock (e.g. calling cards)
  • Cheaper to produce (12 x 3$US)

60,000 photographers shooting 60-100 sitters per day Few headshots, challenges of lighting/lens Matthew Brady, curtain+column, in the US

Everyday people could represent themselves aesthetic "like famous people"

  • Establishing standards of self-hood, representation

Cartes de visite authorized "respectability"

  • "Made authority intimate"

Context of cartes is an unstable world of cash

  • Paper money produced in various forms by local banks
  • Some widely known examples of fraud, cash-based scams
    • Also, Melville's "Confidence man" & detective fiction

Photography carried a representational truth

Cartes de visite: "the sentimental greenbacks"

Cartes trade also drove IP regulation in 1860s UK

  • No (TM) for photos so studios added logos/stamps to reverse

Payment for sitters to sit as models (25-1000$ or royalties)

Olmstead critique the cartes+etiquette manuals for transforming "smiles" into "business"





Q&A

Are there archives of cartes that could be used to map the mobility and sociality of their owners?

Connect also to Vera Keller on "Book of friends"

CdV + postal/mail culture

"Ladies of the theater" - pornographic cdv

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