ABSTRACT
Immediately upon the announcement of the daguerreotype, photography was commercialised in the form of portrait studios that opened up across the globe. Later, the reproducible nature of portraits on paper, particularly in the form of cartes de visite, cemented the use of the portrait to denote social status. With the spread of Daguerreotypy during the 1840s came a demand for the creation of photographic 'likenesses' from the middle and upper classes. Commercial portrait studios opened across Europe and the US, with successful practitioners such as Antoine Claudet, Robert Cornelius and Josiah Johnson Hawes attracting well-to-do customers and charging high prices. In the 1850s, paper prints made through the collodion process began to supplant the daguerreotype, particularly in the form of cartes de visite - the 'calling card'. In 1854 Andre-Adolphe-Eugene Disderi patented a four-lensed camera that could register up to eight different images on one plate.
