30″ x 40″
I’m delighted that the New York Public Library put up a post on their Tumblr about my “Carte de Visite” paintings. Here is THE LINK a few thoughts about the ongoing series. Did you know Daguerre also invented the diorama? News to me. There’s a guy to have lunch with when the time machine comes together.
The uniformity of the carte de visite photos is intriguing to me. Often one figure is surrounded by studio props – rocks, birds hanging from the ceiling – in front of a painted backdrop of a landscape. It can actually be hard to tell where the room ends, and what is real, like one of those great dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History. Dioramas were also invented by Daguerre, so there’s that connection to photography as well. There is the sense that the subject is enclosed in a glass case. It has been fabulous to have access to the NYPL archive, to study images in detail, including the marginalia, and occasional edits by the photographer. As a painter, I find those fugitive marks captivating.