[Eugene Benson] 1860s

This is a photograph of Eugene Benson made by Maurice Stadtfeld, though we don’t know exactly when. It belongs to a type of image known as a ‘carte de visite,’ a calling card that exploded in popularity during the mid-19th century. These were made using a wet collodion process, by which a glass plate was coated with light-sensitive chemicals, exposed in a camera, and then developed to create a negative. From this negative, Stadtfeld would have been able to produce multiple prints on albumen paper, a readily available material. Think about the labor involved, and also the intense democratization of portraiture that this implied. Not only elites could now have their likenesses recorded. Photography was a modern marvel that changed the social game. It blurred the line between art, craft, and industry. It’s easy to forget now, but this simple card once represented cutting-edge technology.