Elizabeth Anne McCauley
Elizabeth Anne McCauley is David Hunter McAlpin Professor of the History of Photography and Modern Art at Princeton University.
McCauley, Elizabeth Anne
McCauley, Elizabeth Anne
United States of America
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Description: Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity
A few months after the French photographer Félix Nadar opened a newly enlarged, ambitious studio at 35, boulevard des Capucines in 1861, he staged a celebratory photograph of the facade of his business (fig. 1). While showcasing staff members gathered on the roof, fiacres parked along the curb, and an ostentatious gaslit sign applied across the two top...
PublisherArt Institute of Chicago
Related print edition pages: pp.197-208
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00356.17
Description: Industrial Madness: Commercial Photography in Paris, 1848–1871
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00182
In 1848 there were thirteen commercial photographic studios in the city of Paris. By 1871 this number had expanded to almost 400. This book is the first to analyze the origins of professional photography during the Second Empire and its transformation from a novel curiosity to a vital part of the urban environment.

Drawing on extensive archival documentation, Elizabeth Anne McCauley profiles the people who became commercial photographers—the innovators, entrepreneurs, and "artistes" who tried to earn their fortunes but were beset by bankruptcy and failure. She also discusses the business of photography—the ways studios were formed, products promoted, and financial backers found. In a detailed analysis of five studios that represent different aspects of commercial production, from industrial photographs to art reproductions, McCauley uncovers the social, political, and psychological needs that each type of photography satisfied. For example, in a groundbreaking examination of the market for photographs of female nudes, McCauley documents how the photographs reinforced masculine stereotypes of female sexual passivity, how government responses to such images reflected the precariousness of Napoleon III's political power, and how the photographs were positioned within ongoing arguments about realism as a new literary and artistic movement. Industrial Madness is not only an innovative contribution to the sociology of the arts but also an exploration of the ways ideology and visual representation intersected during the decades that saw the birth of modernism.

The book also includes a comprehensive listing of commercial photographers working in Paris between 1848 and 1871.

*This eBook is available exclusively on the A&AePortal*
Print publication date March 1994 (out of print)
Print ISBN 9780300038545
EISBN 9780300253344
Illustrations 141
Print Status out of print
Description: A. A. E. Disdéri and the Carte de Visite Portrait Photograph
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00004
In 1854 the young aspiring photographer A. A. E. Disdéri patented the carte de viste, a relatively inexpensive photograph the size of a traditional calling card. This invention marked the beginning of popular photography, the first step in the transformation of the medium from a unique recording of the world on a daguerrian plate into a commonplace, disposable item taken for granted by its urban clientele.

In this carefully documented book, Elizabeth Anne McCauley traces Disdéri’s successes and failures, using his career as the framework against which to describe the history and significance of his most successful product. The carte becomes a unique means for McCauley to examine the social and cultural life of the mid-19th-century French middle class—their morals and manners, fashions and obsessions. McCauley finds that the cartes became a great equalizer, allowing bourgeois Parisians to examine and, in effect, bring into their living rooms the famous politicians, actors, dance-hall girls, and writers in the photographs. The carte also gave the bourgeoisie the opportunity to dress in their Sunday best and record their own lineage, just as the well‑to-do had done for centuries in painted portraits.

McCauley shows that the proliferation of the carte had a marked effect not only on society but also on portrait painting, especially on the styles and compositions of young artists such as Manet, Degas, Monet, and Renoir. Her multifaceted study thus provides a new perspective on art history, French culture, and photography.

*This book is available exclusively on the A&AePortal.*
Print publication date September 1985 (out of print)
Print ISBN 9780300031690
EISBN 9780300253337
Illustrations 204
Print Status out of print