Figure 1.--This studio cabinet card portrait was taken in 1906 or 07. Note the new style mount and the greenish-grey color. The boy is Ivan Eugene Perry. He was 4 or 5 years old and wears a tunic suit with long ringlet curls. Ivan is posed with a tricycle. The mount sizes also varied after the turn of the century. It is is 8x6 inches and the actual photograph 5 1/2x4 inches. The studio was Bergmann in York, Pennsylvania.

There were major inovations at the turn of the 20th century. Suddenly the standardized cabinet card mount rapidly went out of style and new sizes and designs appeared. We have no idea why this occurred at the turn of the century and why it occurred so sudenly. We see a lot of cream anf greenish grey mounts for some reason. Seems rather an ugly color, but it was popular. Several inventors made important contributions to photography in the 19th century. It was the American George Eastman that created the first user friendly camera for amateurs--the Kodak Brownie (1900). The resulting snapshot revolutionized photography. And we no longer see mostly stiff studio prints, but photographs taken in every conceivable locations depicting all kinds and activies and circumstances. Many images are around the home and soon the family car makes a major appearamnce. Many early photographs, both studio portraits and snapshots were done with postcard backs. Theoretically they could be mailed like postcards, but most people preferred to mail them as enclosures in letters. Silver nitrate portraits appeared, replacing albumen cabinet cards. Studios commonly encased them in stylish paper frames. We see more and more family snapshots during the inter-War period. They were done in ,any different types and sizes with varuious edges and borders. Square pgitograps were popular in the 1950s-70s because od a new Brownie camera. Poloraid came out with instant photopgraphy. Color processes were developed in the inter-War era, but dyes were unstable and color film and processing expensive. Some people took slides which could be projected. Germany was a leader in color photography, but German industry was destroyed in World War II and Kodak energed as the world leader in photography, especially color photography, after the War, dominating the market for many years. It was only well after World War II that color photography became standard. Color only became widespread in the 1970s. Then at the end of the century, digital photography appeared.

Created: 2:13 AM 10/3/2013
Last updated: 2:13 AM 10/3/2013