Over the weekend I listened and watched the Photo History - Class 2 Fall 08 - History Survey Part 1 podcast which drew my attention to a couple of interesting things.

Firstly, the idea of Carte de visite - photographic calling cards which were used both as visiting cards but which were also traded amongst friends and family. This immediately got me thinking about moo cards, and the use that they have, both as a way to pass on a selection of personal information, but also to be used as a thing of beauty, a way to distribute photographs and to be traded. Before listening to the podcast I had no idea that such an idea was pioneered as early as the 1850s.

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To make these Carte de Visite a multi lens camera could be used to result in several small similar images being produced on one photograph which would then carefully be separated into separate cards. Obviously this made me think about the various lomo cameras, like the actionsampler, pop 9 etc. Again, I hadn't realised that this concept had such a history in the relatively early days of photography.

So, yet more things learnt from listening to the excellent Photo History podcast.