Madame Louis Joachim Gaudibert

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...

~In 1860, when sales of carte de visite portraits were soaring thanks to the mass production of views of contemporary celebrities, the Goncourt brothers discussed with the caricaturist Gavarni what the future direction of his portraits should be. Gavarni told them that “he wanted to...