Maximilian’s Calling Cards Focus of LAII Talk

Max­i­m­il­ian von Habsburg

Green­leaf Vis­it­ing Scholar Eleanor Laugh­lin presents, “‘Max­i­m­il­iano (Charro)’ and ‘Max­i­m­il­iano muerto’: The Democ­ra­ti­za­tion of the Emperor’s Image dur­ing the French Inter­ven­tion in Mex­ico (1862–67),” on Thurs­day, April 21, at noon in the Herzstein Latin Amer­i­can Read­ing Room, sec­ond floor of Zim­mer­man Library. A recep­tion fol­lows the presentation.

Laughlin’s pre­sen­ta­tion exam­ines two pho­to­graphic rep­re­sen­ta­tions of Max­i­m­il­ian von Hab­s­burg pro­duced and dis­trib­uted widely as call­ing cards (cates-de-visite, or tar­je­tas de visita) dur­ing and after the French Inter­ven­tion in Mex­ico (1862–67). In exam­in­ing the tarjetas-de-visita, Laugh­lin con­sid­ers sev­eral con­texts from both sides of the con­flict — the French and the Mex­i­can. These con­texts include por­trai­ture, pho­tos of social ‘types,’ post-mortem imagery, French war pho­tog­ra­phy, and mourn­ing prac­tices, all of which evi­dence the way cul­tural norms and prac­tices of the gen­eral pop­u­la­tion influ­enced the image of the emperor.

Laugh­lin is a doc­toral can­di­date in the School of Art and Art His­tory at the Uni­ver­sity of Florida, Gainesville. She was awarded the Green­leaf Vis­it­ing Library Scholar travel grant to research UNM’s unique pri­mary resources avail­able in the Maximilian-French Inter­ven­tion Archive, and in par­tic­u­lar the cates-de-visite col­lec­tions in the South­west Cen­ter for Research.

This grant is funded by a gen­er­ous gift to the LAII from Dr. Richard E. Green­leaf.