Paul Frecker

Paul Frecker

History of Photography

Previously a highly successful stylist within the fashion industry, for the last twenty years Paul Frecker has been a dealer in nineteenth-century photography, specialising in cartes de visite. Paul’s Instagram account @19thcenturyphotos has over 10,000 followers. He lives in a converted church in the Scottish Highlands.

 

CARTOMANIA: PHOTOGRAPHY AND CELEBRITY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

CARTOMANIA: PHOTOGRAPHY AND CELEBRITY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

‘As Paul Frecker explains in this eye-opening and frequently jaw-dropping history of the phenomenon, it was “a perfect storm of merchandising, consumerism and social display”, and reading his account of its rise and fall, accompanied by hundreds of images from Frecker’s own collection, opens up a set of fascinating peepholes onto a now vanished world.’ 

Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, Spectator

‘Lavishly illustrated with incredible examples of the genre, from royalty and celebrity through to the subversive courtesans of the day … It’s a fascinating and exhaustive study, Frecker is an expert in the field and combines the factual and historical with much wry humour and clearly relishes relaying his knowledge as well as the most sensational stories of the day.’

WYLDE MAGAZINE

‘No book on the carte de visite would be complete without a well-curated selection of these photographs, and Frecker has certainly chosen some brilliant examples.’

CREATIVE REVIEW

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