Just a moment
Just a moment
Unknown · c. 1860/70 · Art Institute of Chicago
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Around the time of the Civil War, cartes de visite—small, inexpensive studio portraits—became extremely popular among middle-class Americans. Cartes were traded, kept in albums, and occasionally cut and pasted to form personalized collages. This is an unusual example of a portrait collage in that it implies a family tree, with layers of photographs clustered at the bottom and hierarchical rows at the top. It is possible that the composition focuses on a Union soldier, his commanding officers, and his family. If so, the work represents a transition from textual record keeping, such as lists of births and deaths, to a new visual narrative of family history, whether kept in an album or framed on the wall.
The museum’s own description, in English. Licence: CC BY 4.0
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Image: Art Institute of Chicago, CC0
