Clara Morris, from the Actresses series (N245) issued by Kinney Brothers to promote Sweet Caporal Cigarettes 1890

Curator: Immediately, I see a quiet sort of strength, you know? Her gaze holds something, even in this faded tone. It’s like a memory just out of reach. Editor: This is a print of Clara Morris, the celebrated stage actress, produced by the Kinney Brothers Tobacco Company around 1890. It’s part of a series of actresses used to promote their Sweet Caporal Cigarettes. Curator: Ah, tobacco marketing, that explains the somewhat…romanticised air. Like a beautiful smoke dream! Editor: Exactly. These "actress cards" were enormously popular. They tap into the burgeoning celebrity culture, the public’s fascination with these women who were becoming stars in a new way through theater. These cards were inserted into cigarette packs. Curator: Little pieces of fame, tucked away. Did folks keep them, like little shrines to thespian goddesses? Editor: Precisely. Many collected them. They tell us a lot about the public image of actresses at the time – the studio-style portraiture, emphasizing beauty and respectability to counteract some stereotypes surrounding actresses. The photo is idealized and subtly retouched. Curator: It is so poised! And in her own way a sort of power that comes from being so visible and sought after! The details almost look hand drawn because of how fine it is, a little like pointillism somehow with how everything merges and becomes clear at the same time. Editor: Right, it walks the line between mass-produced commodity and artistic object. What the actress chooses to present, how it’s made, its circulation, are always culturally situated choices in an ongoing process of evaluation and exchange between the subject and the audiences consuming their identity in print. Curator: An advertisement and a relic... Kind of an ephemeral feeling and so fitting in what concerns performances: Always moving away the moment they took place. Editor: Precisely, capturing a moment that by design, is just out of grasp as soon as it comes into being.