Figure 1.--Unlike many other countries, Russian studios did not move to new styles of cabinet card mounts after the turn-of-the 20th century. They continued to preimarily use the classic style mounts popular in the 19th century. We see some new style mounts like this one in 1901. But most we continue to see the classic mounts. The greyish brown color we see here is one of the new colors that became popular in the 20th century.

Albumen images are mostly portaits, primarily CDVs and cabinet cards. We see few Russian stereo view cards. Almost all of the portraits we have found are cabinet cards. We have not found many CDVs, unlike photography in the West where CDV were very popular, especially in the 1860s and 70s, but continued to be taken longer than in America. Russia was the largest country in Europe. Much of the population, however, was in the countryside, many were serfs or after emancipation in 1861 former serfs. The photographic record of any country is not only a function of the population (number of people), but also the income of the population, meaning how many people could aford to have a portrait taken. Almost all of the photographic record, however, is of the upper- and middle-class population of the cities, a limited segment of the popuation. The Albumen images are a little different in Russia than in other countries. First of all the CDVs rapidly went out of style when cabinet cards appeared (late-1860s). We see large numbers of cabinet cards. They are styled like the classic cabine cards popular in Western Eutope (1860s-90s). Unlike America and Western Europe, we do not see many Russian cabinet cards styled like the different styles of mounts after the turn-of the 20th century. In Russia we continue to see the classic 19th century mounts into the 20th century. The colors of the mounts did change to some of the same muted colors popular in the West. The 1901 cabint card here is a good example (figure 1). It is styled like the classic 19th century mounts, but it is done in one of the muted shades popular in the early-20th century.

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Created: 8:34 PM 7/4/2019
Last updated: 11:12 PM 7/5/2019