9
cabinet cards. The resultant publicity, both free and paid
for, could generate sales of tens of thousand for a single
carte, each carrying the photographer’s details on its
back. The carte de visite craze and new standard styles
of presenting photographs supported a specialist station-
ary trade supplying customized mounts, envelopes and
studio paperwork branded with the photographers name
and studio details. Marion & Company and the London
Stereoscopic Company both of London and Percy Lund
& Company of Bradford were perhaps the best known.
The growth of chains of studios in the later nineteenth
century, such as A & G Taylor which had twenty-fi ve
branches across Britain by 1880 offered the public fa-
miliarity and, perhaps, a consistency in the style of work
produced. Such studios advertised extensively.
Photographic manufacturers and retailers
If the photographic studio was focused on reaching the
general public, then photographic manufacturers and
retailers from 1839 until the later 1880s were more
interested in reaching photographers, photographic
studios and the serious amateur or art photographer to
sell equipment, sensitized materials and photographic
requisites. Occasional advertisements in specialist art
journals were used but manufacturers often used more
targeted means of reaching their markets. The specialist
photographic press would carry advertisements (which
were frequently discarded when the loose issues were
bound) and year books carrying formulae and reference
material which would be kept for longer periods of
time carried extensive advertisements from the 1860s
especially as the photographic trade began to specialize.
Some fi rms such as Horne & Thornthwaite, J.J. Griffi n
and others had their catalogues bound into the back
of photographic manuals or books; in some cases the
company would commission the book or a staff member
would write it. Firms such as Negretti and Zambra, Fal-
lowfi eld and Houghtons amongst many issued their own
separate catalogues particularly from the later 1860s. By
the end of the century some of these were over 1,000
pages carrying thousands of different products.
The later 1880s and especially the 1890s saw the
advertising of cameras and photographic goods in more
mainstream publications and targeted at the consumer.
This was partly facilitated by the growth of a popular
press able to print with lithographed illustrations. The
Illustrated London News and Punch for example, all
carried extensive display advertising. The key driver
for this change in emphasis was the growth of popular
photography epitomised by the Kodak camera of 1888
which by the early 1890s was extensively advertised
outside of the traditional photographic press directly
to an amateur audience. The company saw branding as
essential in ensuring that a consistent, familiar, image
was given to its customers: everything from the Kodak
name itself to its retail shops was part of this. In the
late-1890s George Davison, Kodak’s managing direc-
tor in Britain, asked designer George Walton to style its
shops. The Kodak girl was introduced in 1901 to appear
in advertising to emphasise style and the simplicity of
Kodak photography. Other manufacturers moved some
of their advertising into more mainstream publications:
the main British companies of Lancaster, Thornton-
Pickard, Houghton and Butcher all targeted the amateur
directly with their cameras and photographic products
before the century was over. Well-known illustrators
were used to prepare advertisements.
The photographic trade’s early focus of mainly target-
ing professionals and the serious amateur had, by the
end of the century, broadened into a much wider con-
sumer strategy as the amateur and family photographer
began to grow in commercial importance. Cameras and
sensitized materials were being mass-produced and sold
directly to the consumer and advertising played a key
part in this process.
Michael PritchardADVERTISING USES OF
PHOTOGRAPHY
During the late nineteenth century, manufacturers began
placing visual images in the mass media to create and
promote brand-name products. Advertisers began to un-
derstand that images could be designed to sell products
and services by making irrational appeals to consumers’
needs and desires. Photography’s aptitude as a factual
and persuasive tool to sell goods and services to potential
customers, grounded in the perceived “truth” of camera
images, is what gave the medium such potential to be
coupled with advertising text.
Photography in service of product illustrations and
sales aids had its earliest beginnings in daguerreotypes,
calotypes, and in the collodion era, ambrotypes, cartes
de visites, cabinet cards, and stereographic cards. The
precedent for illustrating product through photography
appears in Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre’s Still-Life,
1837 and Shells & Fossils, 1839, daguerreotypes of
objects arranged in his studio. Equally, the calotype
process provided opportunities for documentary product
photography in the early days of the medium. In The
Pencil of Nature, published between 1844 and 1846,
William Henry Fox Talbot had demonstrated that the
camera was an excellent tool for documenting sculpture,
china and glassware, and even a sample of lace. In es-
sence his serial publication was an advertisement for
the calotype process of photography itself.
Photography’s earliest infl uence upon illustrative art
for print media was exerted through the process of the
woodcut. The photograph’s initial role relating to adver-