Elsie Moore, from the Actors and Actresses series (N171) for Gypsy Queen Cigarettes 1886 - 1890

Editor: This is a card featuring Elsie Moore, part of the Actors and Actresses series for Gypsy Queen Cigarettes, produced between 1886 and 1890 by Goodwin & Company. It’s a print, combining drawing and photography, and I'm struck by how this intimate portrait ended up as part of a mass-produced object. What’s your take? Curator: Well, let's focus on "Gypsy Queen Cigarettes." This isn't high art commissioned for a wealthy patron, but a mass-produced advertisement. Consider the labor involved: from growing the tobacco to printing thousands of these cards, inserting them into cigarette packs, this card represents the industrialization of leisure and consumption in late 19th-century America. The materiality of the card itself is cheap, ephemeral. Editor: So, it’s less about Elsie Moore, the actress, and more about the mechanics of how these images circulated? Curator: Precisely. While we can speculate about Elsie Moore's position as a performer, and whether that influenced consumer desires, what is truly remarkable is how a photographic image gets integrated into a consumer product to enhance the commodity’s perceived value. We have to remember that at the time these types of objects had an influence on culture building a market to desire this product Editor: It’s a far cry from a painted portrait hanging in a gallery! I didn’t consider the sheer volume of these things being produced. Curator: It challenges our assumptions about artistic creation and dissemination. Mass production altered labor, audience, and function. Editor: Looking at it this way, it makes me question who was buying these cigarettes and their relation with the celebrity in this commercialized format. This small card tells such a bigger story. Curator: Exactly! By looking closely at the materiality and the context of its production, we understand a very different, and arguably more revealing story than if we just took it at face value as a portrait.