Small Cards, Diverse Stories:
Cartes de Visite and Cartes de Cabinet in the Photo Collection of the Volkskundemuseum Wien
“Do you collect the stickers, too?”
Many of us have probably heard this question quite often at a supermarket checkout. This effective promotional call to collect small stickers with various designs creates a connection between our present day and the special formats for photographs from the late 19th century, which are also part of the collection at the Volkskundemuseum Wien (Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art). Thanks to the digitization initiative of the Federal Ministry of Housing, Arts, Culture, Media and Sport (BMWKMS), the museum was able to carry out an ambitious digitization project. From a wide range of collection objects, a collection of approximately 1,200 photographs from the museum’s photo collection was selected for the project. This is a collection of positives, all of which conform to the standard formats of carte de visite (approx. 9 cm × 5.5 cm) or carte de cabinet (approx. 14.5 cm × 10 cm). We still recognize the subjects captured back then (e.g., landmarks, travel photos, picturesque landscapes (pos/63274), and family portraits) today, and we find similar scenes on stickers from the supermarket as well as in our personal photo albums.
This article will be published in English soon.