The photographic act has always been a disruptive technology. After the studio photographers unseated the portrait painters, the craft of photography has gone about regularly disrupting itself, an inherent trait that continues to this day. For a while, notably in the 1860’s, common folks and celebrities alike visited the studios to have inexpensive little albumen prints made and pasted onto a standard-sized card, about 2 ½ by 4 inches, that could be shared with friends. Typically, a family might keep a little album with the cards of their friends (and favorite celebrities) on a prominent table in the entryway. Nowadays you can find these little cards in archives and yard sales, most of them long and sadly separated from the lineage that descended from the subjects who had originally sat with the intention of informing their progeny of its origins. The cards in this album have been in a little plastic bag in my desk for many years; I have no idea how they came into my possession.
