ART REVIEW | 'PLAYING WITH PICTURES' The Pastime of Victorian Cutups By ROBERTA SMITH

see slideshow of more images from exhibition

"....In all fairness, “Playing With Pictures” includes the work of one man and also a French woman, but in the main it demonstrates how upper-class English women — some of whom knew one another — introduced cutout photographs into the albums of watercolors, sketches and writing that had long been an approved female leisure activity. Their hybrid medium was stimulated by an advance in photography: the invention of the carte-de-visite process, which was patented by the French photographer André Disdéri in 1854. A precursor of the photo-booth technique, it essentially democratized photography with small, cheap, multiple portraits, creating a rage for collecting and exchanging these so-called cartes de visite that came to be known as cardomania."
“Playing With Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage” is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through May 9: (212) 535-7710, metmuseum.org.

Printmaking Opening at Union College, Thurs Feb 18, 4-6 pm

NEW YORK TIMES, FeB 4, 2010, by Ken Johnson

ART REVIEW | 'PHILAGRAFIKA 2010' What Is Printmaking Today? Philadelphia Dares to Ask

Rita Ackerman, Visiting Artist Lecture UAlbany, Tues Feb 9, 4:30, BOOR Sculpture Building