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Manufacturers of standardized card stock and print materials hoped to stimulate sales and retain public interest in card photographs. In the decade before 1900, the number and variety of card photograph styles expanded in response to declining sales. Photo album manufacturers responded by producing albums with pages primarily for cabinet cards with a few pages in the back reserved for the old family carte de visite prints.įor nearly three decades after the 1860s, the commercial portraiture industry was dominated by the carte de visite and cabinet card formats. Small stands and photograph frames for the tabletop replaced the heavy photograph album. Photographers began employing artists to retouch photographs by altering the negative before making the print to hide facial defects revealed by the new format.

The reverse side of the card as seen above.Įarly in its introduction, the cabinet card ushered in the temporary disuse of the photographic album which had come into existence commercially with the carte de visite. However, when the renowned Civil War photographer Mathew Brady first started offering them to his clientele towards the end of 1865, he used the trademark "Imperial Carte-de-Visite." Whatever the name, the popular print format joined the photograph album as a fixture in the late 19th-century Victorian parlor. The cabinet card was large enough to be easily viewed from across the room when typically displayed on a cabinet, which is probably why they became known as such in the vernacular. Owing to the larger image size, the cabinet card steadily increased in popularity during the second half of the 1860s and into the 1870s, replacing the carte de visite as the most popular form of portraiture. The last cabinet cards were produced in the 1920s, even as late as 1924. A true black-and-white image on a cabinet card is likely to have been produced in the 1890s or after 1900. Matte collodion was used in the same period. Gelatin papers were introduced in the 1870s and started gaining acceptance in the 1880s and 1890s as the gelatin bromide papers became popular. Sometimes images from this period can be identified by a greenish cast. These photographs have a neutral image tone and were most likely produced on a matte collodion, gelatin or gelatin bromide paper. Some cabinet card images from the 1890s have the appearance of a black-and-white photograph in contrast to the distinctive sepia toning notable in the albumen print process.

Despite the similarity, the cabinet card format was initially used for landscape views before it was adopted for portraiture. However, later into its popularity, other types of papers began to replace the albumen process. Both were most often albumen prints, the primary difference being the cabinet card was larger and usually included extensive logos and information on the reverse side of the card to advertise the photographer’s services. The carte de visite was displaced by the larger cabinet card in the 1880s. (Note the dark-colored wedding dress, which was common during the early to mid-19th century.) A photograph of a wedding party probably from the late 1870s to 1880s.