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commercially produced stereoscopic daguerreotypes,
ambrotypes, and glass diapositives of the displays were
available for sale, alongside paper prints from glass
negatives, at special booths inside the exhibition halls.
By the time of the Centennial Exhibition in Phila-
delphia in 1876, the use of photography at exhibitions
had been further extended by William Notman, with the
creation of photographic identity cards for the exhibition
staff and exhibitors, initiating the huge market for ID
cards that now exists.
Today’s market for photographs as advertising can
trace its genesis back to the very earliest days of the
medium. Daguerreotypes of industrial machinery, clocks
and watches, and other commercial products, survive
from the early to mid 1850s, the purpose for which can
only have been promotional. By the height of the carte-
de-visite era, the ubiquitous paper print format was also
being widely used to allow travelling salesmen to dem-
onstrate the full range of products from the companies
they represented—and without the cumbersome bulk
and weight of daguerreotypes.
The daguerreotype also played a limited but nonethe-
less signifi cant part in the introduction of photography
for the expanding tourist market mid-century—the
most notable example being the concession operated at
Niagara Falls by Platt D Babbitt, creating the ultimate
memento of a visit, with the tourists posed against the
magnifi cent backdrop.
Once the high cost of large paper prints began to
decline in the 1860s, and the higher costs of travel de-
clined as well, the advent of cheap rail travel—especially
in Europe—and the parallel introduction of cheaper
photography, created a vast market for tourist imagery.
This market was dominated by, amongst others, such
fi gures as Samuel Bourne in India, Francis Frith and
George Washington Wilson in Britain, William Notman
in Canada, Kusakabe Kimbei in Japan, the Adelphoi
Zangaki, Pascal Sebah and others in Egypt, and Carleton
E Watkins and others in America. Especially along
the routes of the European and Middle Eastern Grand
Tours—which grew in popularity from the 1860s—nu-
merous photographic studios were established explicitly
to cater for the growing tourist market.
The carte-de-visite was more crucially infl uential
in the popularisation of the tourist image—and can be
seen as the direct predecessor of the picture postcard
market which emerged as the nineteenth century drew
to a close and which dominated the twentieth century.
The much lower price of the carte-de-visite and the
common format with the family album ensured that
the tourist image became just as much a part of family
history as the portrait.
The fi rst, and most obviously popular, market to be
exploited commercially was, of course, portraiture,
and the world’s fi rst professional portrait studio was
opened by Alexander S Wolcott and John Johnson on
March 4, 1840. The New York Sun carried an account
of the opening:
Sun Drawn Miniatures—Mr A. S. Wolcott, No. 52 First
Street, has introduced an improvement on the daguerreo-
type, by which he is enabled to execute miniatures, with
an accuracy as perfect as nature itself, in the short space of
three to fi ve minutes. We have seen one, taken on Monday,
when the state of the atmosphere was far from favourable,
the fi delity of which is truly astonishing. The miniatures
are taken on silver plate, and enclosed in bronze cases,
for the low price of three dollars for single ones.
The fi rst photographic studio opened in France is
believed to have been that of Nicholas-Marie Paymal
Lerebours, which operated from late spring 1841, but
Richard Beard opened what is believed to have been
Europe’s first professional photographic studio at
London’s Royal Polytechnic Institution, on March 23,
1841, just a few weeks earlier than Lerebours.
High costs limited the market for photographic
portraits in the early years largely to that stratum of
society which might previously have aspired, even if
it could not quite afford, to have a miniature painting
made. It would be the 1860s before reducing costs,
simplifi ed techniques and processes, and the advent of
the populist carte-de-visite saw the portraiture market
burgeon.
By the end of the nineteenth century, most cities
were heavily over-populated with photographic portrait
studios—many of which would never achieve a level
of fi nancial viability. In London, for example, from
Beard’s original studio in 1841, the number of active
photographic studios in the city had swelled to almost
three hundred.
Wedding photography, today one of the mainstays
of the profession, fi rst came into popularity in the mid
1850s. Bridal portrait and full-length daguerreotypes by
Southworth & Hawes of Boston survive from c.1854,
with other portraits of wedding couples by unknown
photographers surviving from the same period. While
some of these earliest examples of the genre show the
bride in a wedding dress, the majority of early wedding
photographs were taken after the event, with the bride
and groom, hands interlinked, presenting the bride’s left
hand and wedding ring to the camera. In many early
daguerreotypes and ambrotypes, of course, with their
lateral reversal of the image, it appears to be the bride’s
right hand which is offered to the lens.
Four years later, in 1858, the wedding of the Prin-
cess Royal, the eldest daughter of Queen Victoria, was
photographed by Caldesi, whose pictures included the
eighteen year old bride with her parents, and a group
picture of her eight bridesmaids. Indeed Queen Victoria,
a staunch supporter of early photography in general,
also did much to popularize the wedding picture in