Count and Countess Eyszkewitz

In 1854, A. A. E. Disdéri patented a system for cheaply and quickly producing cartes de visite—photographs the size of a visiting card, exposed eight per glass-plate negative, developed and printed as a unit, then cut into eighths and mounted to cards for distribution to friends and family. This rare, uncut sheet from the Disdéri archive shows how various poses could be captured on a single negative with a multi-lens camera. His system was widely adopted by other photographers in the years and decades that followed, bringing photographic portraiture within the grasp of nearly everyone, whether a count and countess or a cook.