“Sentimental ‘Greenbacks’ of Civilization”

Abstract

This chapter will explore a prototypical form of self-promotion—the carte de visite, an inexpensive paper portrait photographs mounted on card stock. Exchanged and collected by all classes of people across Europe and North America in the 1860s and 1870s, cartes helped to commercialize the profession of photography, democratize access to self-presentation, introduce standardized visual conventions for respectable selfhood, and extend social networks. They also raised issues around the ownership of self-image and initiated forms of temporary celebrity. Poised on the verge of consumer capitalism and the rise of the advertising industry, cartes de visites worked to inaugurate contemporary forms of self-promotion found in the Facebook profile or the reality television participant.