Carte de Visite vs Stereograph
名刺判写真 / ステレオ写真
Carte de Visite comes from Publishing and Editing and Stereograph from Photographic Techniques. One is style and the other technique. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Carte de Visite
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Disdéri patented a card-sized portrait made in quantity. Printing eight poses on a single glass plate made portraiture cheap enough to democratize it, and the collecting of celebrity cards and the album culture around them are where the shared face begins.
Stereograph
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Two views of one scene taken from slightly separated positions, mounted side by side and sent to each eye through a viewer so the scene reads as depth. Placing an object large in the foreground to force that depth was the standard move.
| Carte de Visite | Stereograph | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1854–1900s | 1850s-1930s |
| Family | Publishing and Editing | Photographic Techniques |
| Kind | Style | Technique |
| Cues | Card-sized mounts / Full-length studio poses / The studio's logo on the back / Album collecting | Two nearly identical views side by side / A curved card mount / An object set large in the foreground / Description printed on the back |
| Best used for | Rosters and membership cards that need faces in one consistent format · Small portrait cards produced in quantity to be handed out | Records of ruins and architecture that need to keep their depth · Exhibition content shown together with the device that displays it |
| Type | Issuer name and ornamental frame on the back, image alone on the front | Set title and description on the back and number the series |
| Composition | Stand the figure full length with backdrop and props naming their station | Always include foreground, middle and distance to build depth steps |
| Material | Mount on card and print several identical poses at once | Hold the parallax constant and mount on card stiff enough to curve |
| Caution | The more each card is staged differently, the less the set works when laid out together, and the pleasure of collecting and comparing disappears. | Two images are simply placed side by side without matching the parallax, so viewers never fuse them and come away with tired eyes instead of depth. |