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19th Century Actors PhotographsThe 19th Century Actors Photographs collection consists of 610 cartes-de-visite studio portraits of entertainers, actors, and actresses who performed on the American stage in the mid- to late 1800s. Many of these actors and actresses were little known outside of the major theater centers of New York City, Philadelphia, and Boston. Such was the popularity of the theater, though, that even good "utility" actors and actresses could justify having these photographs made. The cartes-de-visite, mounted on 2-1/2-by-4-inch card stock, could be produced cheaply and collectors were fond of purchasing photographs of their favorite performers. The card trade flourished as performers realized the publicity value of the collectible cartes-de-visite. By the 1870s-1880s millions were sold in the United States, when the process reached its greatest popularity. About the DatabaseSelection, research and descriptive metadata for the 19th Century Actors Carte-de-visite Collection were completed by Kathy Stice and the UW Libraries Special Collections Division staff in 2002. Most of the photographs from this collection were included in this database. The images were scanned from b/w photographic prints in grayscale using a Microtek Scanmaker 9600L and saved in .jpg format. Some manipulation of the images was done to present the clearest possible digital image. The scanned images were then linked with descriptive data using the Contentdm software suite. The original collection resides in the UW Libraries Special Collections Division as the 19th Century Actors Carte-des-visite Collection. Ph Coll 75. |
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