Card Number 100, Josie Hall, from the Actors and Actresses series (N145-2) issued by Duke Sons & Co. to promote Cross Cut Cigarettes 1880s

Curator: This is a rather fascinating piece! We're looking at "Card Number 100, Josie Hall, from the Actors and Actresses series" issued by Duke Sons & Co. in the 1880s as a promotional item for Cross Cut Cigarettes. It's part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection. Editor: Oh, my, it feels like stepping into a sepia dream! A glimpse of a bygone era where smoking and stardom were elegantly intertwined. There’s a soft melancholy to her profile, isn't there? Curator: Indeed. Let's look closely. It exemplifies pictorialism, doesn't it? The way the light gently diffuses across her face, almost like a painting… It softens the photographic edges, imparting a sense of grace and timelessness, despite being mass-produced. Editor: I see what you mean about pictorialism! But the blatant commercialism… It sort of shatters the illusion, doesn't it? 'Cross Cut Cigarettes ARE the BEST.' plastered above her head. It's a rather jarring juxtaposition. Almost like a comment on fame itself— fleeting, marketable. What's the point in softening the photograph if it will be used in ads, I wonder. Curator: That’s a very astute observation. And exactly what the company tried to capitalize upon! Hall becomes both subject and sign, representing ideals of beauty and success readily consumed, like the cigarettes themselves. It reveals an anxiety about high and low culture—and its dissolution! This wasn't a standalone art object, remember—it was trading card inserted in cigarette packs. Editor: So it’s a genre painting in its own right! And it also reveals cultural values from back in the days. Makes you wonder, doesn't it, what future historians will deduce from our advertising obsessions. Curator: Precisely. It is the formal constraints within a tiny photograph, a miniature frame for Victorian ideals, intertwined with marketing objectives, that captures my interest. Editor: I love the collision of these two elements! It does make me wonder about Josie Hall, the woman herself. Did she ever puff on those "best" cigarettes, perhaps wrestling with her own fame? An actress trapped within a portrait within a product! I think I feel even more melancholy knowing that. Curator: The mystery endures. Thank you! Editor: Thanks, that was fun!