274
Parisian theaters. He performed in comedies at l’École
Lyrique de la Tour d’Auvergne, but reportedly did not
show a great deal of talent. He also wrote two dramas,
Le Pêcheur d’Amalfi and Les Martyrs de l’Autriche. He
took up caricature in the 1850s, illustrating fi gures of
the Parisian theater world at fi rst. His reputation grew
and he enjoyed enough success that he was inspired to
found several journals including Diogène and Le Bou-
levard which combined caricature with literature and
cultural and political gossip. His interest and involve-
ment with photography was a natural evolution from
caricature. He opened his fi rst studio in the early 1860s.
His photographic work was exclusively portraiture in
carte-de-visite and larger formats, focusing on fi gures
in his circle such as writers, artists, and actors. He also
photographed well-known political fi gures as well as
the Communards of 1871. Though he gave up photog-
raphy in the late 1870s, he continued to write articles
and poetry until the end of his life. He died in 1906. The
location of much of his photography is untraceable after
being sold to a Mr. Roth in 1923.
See Also: Cartes-de-Viste; Petit, Pierre; Disdéri,
André-Adolphe-Eugène; Mayer & Pierson; Nadar
(Gaspard-Félix Tournachon); Wet Collodion
Negative; and Wet Collodion Positive Processes.
Further Reading
Adhémar, Jean, “Carjat,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts, v. 80 (July-
August 1972), 71–81.
Carjat, Etienne, Artiste et citoyen [Artist and citizen], Paris:
Tresse édit, 1883.
Etienne Carjat, Ville de Chalon-Sur-Saone, Musée Nicéphore
Niépce, 1980 (exhibition catalogue).
Haddad, Hubert, preface, Etienne Carjat 1828–1906, Paris:
A L’Image Du Grenier Sur L’Eau, 1990 (exhibition cata-
logue).
Heftler, Sylviane de Decker, Etienne Carjat, 1823–1906,
Photographe, Paris: Musée Carnavalet, 1982 (exhibition
catalogue).
McCauley, Anne, “Caricature and Photography in Second Empire
Paris” Art Journal Winter 1983, 355–360.
CARRICK, WILLIAM (1827–1878)
Professional photographer
William Carrick, known in Russia as Vasiliy Andreevich
Carrick, was born on the 31st of December in 1827 in
Edinburgh, Scotland, into the family of a merchant.
His father purchased wood from Russia and so due to
business necessities, the family moved to Kronshtadt in
- Carrick spent nearly all his life, from his child-
hood, in Russia. Upon fi nishing school in St. Petersburg
he entered St. Petersburg Academy of Art. He graduated
from the academy in 1850 with and art degree. Among
his teachers in the academy one could name Alexander
Broullov, Karl Broullov’s brother, and other outstanding
Russian artists.
In 1853 he left Russia for Rome to continue his
artistic education. In 1856 Carrick returned to Russia.
This was the moment of strained circumstances for his
family due to his father’s death and because of some
unsuccessful fi nancial plans the family carried out in
the course of Crimean War. Carrick was faced with the
problem of having to choose the fi eld of work that would
allow him to provide for his family.
In the 1850s there were a lot of photographic studios
in St. Petersburg as well as in other towns all over Rus-
sia. It was caused by Andre Disderi, a French photog-
rapher, who started to make cartes de visite, and since
then demand for the photographs soared. Photography
became not only a fashionable but also a profi table
business.
Carrick made up his mind to become a professional
photographer and in 1857 he left for Edinburgh to
study the technology of photography. There he became
acquainted with the photographer John McGregor, who
became his associate.
In 1859 they open a photo-studio on the upper-fl oor
of a building in Malya Morskaya street in the center of
St.Petersburg. Carrick started by making photographic
portraits and thus gained experience with the technol-
ogy of studio photography. In 1860, Carrick started to
make photo-reproductions of works of art. He worked
out a unique technology of a more exact reproduction
of a coloured image in black and white. For that he used
specially developed photographic emulsion. He made
reproductions of paintings by the Academy of Arts
graduates, which were then sold in St. Petersburg.
After a while he became interested in making pho-
tographs of village and city inhabitants especially those
belonging to the lower social classes. For the traditional,
patriarchal society of Russia where serfdom was abol-
ished only as recently as 1861, the topic of peasantry had
a key position in the works of prominent and progressive
men of art. The image of a peasant could be found in
literature, music, and painting. One would encounter
the peasant in the works by Alexander Pushkin, Ivan
Turgenev, Mikchail Glinka, Alexei Koltsov and many
other outstanding fi gures in Russian culture. The im-
age of common people was tackled by a Russian artist
Alexei Venetsianov who looked for the harmony in
the beauty of traditional ways of living and the beauty
of Russian nature. The followers of Venetsianov even
formed a trend in the Russian paintings of 1830–40s;
they introduced into painting the characters of town
handicraftsmen, peasants, etc., by providing the viewer
with an insight into the way such people lived.
The technical restrictions of wet collodion outdoor