Photo Christmas Cards
No TagsCan you imagine a world without photo Christmas cards? They are actually a fairly recent invention.
Frenchman, Louis Daguerre created photographic images on silver-plated copper in 1837 and Fox Talbot received a U.S. Patent for a process that enabled photographs to be printed on paper in 1841. According to the History of Photography, the new portraits became hugely popular. By 1850 there were 77 photographic studios in New York City. During the Civil War Matthew Brady’s team took over 7000 pictures to record that period of American turbulence. Following the lead of these men who carried their bulky equipment to the battlefields, photographers became fairly common on the frontier. History was documented and many thousands of families had their photographic portraits made, but professionals did the work and the pictures were still quite expensive.
Then, in 1888, George Eastman developed the roll-film Kodak box camera that changed Americans into a nation of amateur photographers. Kodak’s early advertising slogan was, “You press the button – we do the rest.” Photography was no longer limited to professional photographers. It quickly became available to people of almost every economic level. Snapshots chronicled every event in life. It naturally followed that people would want to share these treasured photos with their families and friends at Christmas. When someone came up with the idea printing or tucking photos into specially designed Christmas cards, it caught on quickly. Now, more than a hundred years later, we still smile when a photo card arrives in the holiday mail.
At CardsDirect there are dozens of beautifully designed Photo Cards and Photo Holder Cards. A picture of your family, company team, or corporate headquarters makes a statement of, “We’re a family – we care.”
