Verso: Backmarks of 19th-Century Photographic Card Mounts

From 1855 to 1915, photographers promoted their production of albumen prints with engaging illustrations on the backs of carte-de-visite and cabinet cards. Listing their business location and prizes won, the backmarks feature enticing and sometimes comic imagery that markets photography as both artistic, through motifs such as palettes, brushes, paintings on easels, and scrolls, and divinely inspired, with angels, Greek deities, and muses. Asymmetrical, floral, and geometric designs express Aestheticism and Japonisme, while sun motifs express the very nature of photography— “writing with light.” While many stamps were stock images, others were bespoke illustrations featuring depictions of studios inside and out, as well as landmarks like the Garfield Monument.

This exhibition analyzes dozens of rarely exhibited backs to reveal clever marketing strategies which photographers employed to promote their services as fine or high art. Interpretive labels analyze imagery in terms of national advances in printmaking and international artistic movement, as well as makers’ lives and oeuvres. National in scope, Verso highlights famous photographers such as Alexander Gardner and E.T. Anthony; award-winning Cincinnati artists like African American brothers-in-law James Presley Ball and Alexander Thomas; leading white image makers James Landy, Charles Brownell, and Samuel Dillon; as well as female photographers like Mary Waldack.

Works for the exhibition are provided by the Cincinnati Museum Center, the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library, and private collections. 

Curator: Theresa Leininger-Miller, Ph.D., Professor of Art History at University of Cincinnati

Artists: Edward Anthony, Julius Asher, C.R. Baker, James Presley Ball, Thornton Barrette, Randolph P. Bellsmith, Isaac Benjamin, Frank S. Bradley, C.A. Brownell, S.P. Burgert, Davison Filson and Sons, W.H. Dill, Samuel W. Dillon, Charles Eisenman, Alexander Gardner, Jno. W. Garver, Ralph W. Huested, H.B. Hull, Joseph Reimann and Co., Max Kaska, Halliday and August Kessberger, E.A. Kiefer, James Landy, Theodore Lilienthal, Archibald and Milton Loryea, Theodore Marceau, William E. Miller, J.L. Morris, W.A. Patton and Dietrich, John A. Pfeifer, Henry T. Perkins, Mrs. Warren A. Reed, James Fitzallen Ryder, Howard Malcolm Sedgwick, Dennison Slocum, Susan Spence, Alexander Thomas, George Cambridge Urlin, Mary Waldack, J.N. Walton, George M. Watson, Alfred P. Webb, J. Peter Weckman, John W. Winder, J.J. Wolfe, S.A. Wolfe, Robert S. Work, Carl Young