ANDRE ADOLPHE EUGENE DISDERI (1819–1889)

'Eugène Disdéri was the creator of carte de visite photographs – the business-card size portraits that were used as calling cards in the nineteenth century. It is difficult to imagine what this uncut sheet of macabre and handsome death mask cards might have been intended for – perhaps some sort of memorial for a child. There is a striking contrast between the cool, graphic simplicity of the ghostly face and the elaborate carved chairback framing it. The result is disturbing, affecting and beautiful.
I was a very unhappy child, full of melancholy and depression, full of dread and sadness. I was capable of great good humour and generosity, socially skilled, but I was fraught with anxiety and feelings of loss. Collecting offered me insight into so much of this. All the photographs in these pages are metaphors. It is like the notion that you are all the characters in your dreams. The photographs in the collection are like that.' – W.M. Hunt