Carte de visite

The carte de visite (French: [kaʁt də vizit], English: 'visiting card', abbr. 'CdV', pl. cartes de visite) was a format of small photograph which was patented in Paris by photographer André Adolphe Eugène Disdéri in 1854, although first used by Louis Dodero in 1851.

Each photograph was the size of a formal visiting card about 4½ x 2½ inches (11.4 x 6.3 cm) and such photograph cards, in what has been called an early form of social media, were commonly traded among friends and visitors in the 1860s. Albums for the collection and display of cards became a common fixture in Victorian parlors. The popularity of the format and its rapid uptake worldwide were due to their relative thrift, which made portrait photographs accessible to a broader demographic, and prior to the advent of mechanical reproduction of photographs, led to the publication and collection of portraits of prominent persons. It was the success of the carte de visite that led to photography's institutionalisation.