Photograph album known as the 'Disdéri' album, after André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri who achieved fame for patenting his version of the carte de visite. The album contains over 350 photographs, salt-prints and albumen prints, the majority studio portraits in the carte de visite format. The images include depictions of the Rothschild family, their relatives, friends and associates, including notable Jewish financiers and politicians.
The photographer in many instances is Eugène Disdéri. André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri (1819-1889) was a French photographer who started his photographic career as a daguerreotypist but gained greater fame for patenting his version of the carte de visite, a small photographic image which was mounted on a card. Disdéri, a brilliant showman, made this system of mass-production portraiture world famous.
The album is bound in brown morocco, lined with royal blue silk, and the initials ‘H.D.’ in gilt metal within a gilt metal border with knotted rope relief. The album was purchased by the Trustees of The Rothschild Archive in 1999; it is not known who the original owner of the album was.
RAL 000/689
