Group of three carte de visite photographs, albumen prints on standard CDV mounts, depicting staged blackface minstrel scenes. All three are backmarked J. G. Vallade, Portrait Painter and Photographer, One door above the Post Office, Altoona, Pennsylvania, indicating production within Vallade’s Altoona studio. One example retains period hand-applied red tinting. In contemporary pencil on the verso of that tinted card appears the identification: “Tall one is George A. Potts, Altoona, Pa.” Based on this inscription, the tall performer is strongly attributed here as George A. Potts across the group.

The photographs present three related theatrical tableaux. One image shows a blackface performer operating a large studio camera while photographing another costumed figure, a deliberately self-referential and comic inversion of the photographic process. A second view depicts a white man offering a coat to a blackface character in a staged interaction, while the third presents two blackface performers posed together in exaggerated costume and gesture, with selective tinting used to heighten visual effect. Taken together, the images document how minstrel performance was staged, costumed, and photographed for circulation through commercial studios, particularly in smaller industrial towns.

George A. Potts, identified by name on the verso, is a figure associated in local records with early municipal leadership in Altoona and is frequently cited as the city’s first mayor following incorporation. While definitive identification of the performer beyond the period inscription cannot be established from the photographs alone, the possibility that a locally prominent civic figure participated in minstrel performance adds a further layer of historical significance. The images underscore the extent to which blackface entertainment permeated multiple levels of 19th-century American society, crossing boundaries between popular performance, commercial photography, and respectable public life.

The versos retain Vallade’s full printed advertisement, listing his combined practice as portrait painter and photographer. As a group, these photographs offer a direct and unfiltered visual record of minstrel culture, regional photographic practice, and the normalization of racial caricature in post Civil War America.