Minnie Cummings, from the Actresses and Celebrities series (N60, Type 2) promoting Little Beauties Cigarettes for Allen & Ginter brand tobacco products 1887

Curator: Looking at this 1887 gelatin silver print, "Minnie Cummings, from the Actresses and Celebrities series," I immediately get this ghostly, delicate vibe. It's sepia-toned, tiny... almost like a dream caught in amber. Editor: Dreamlike is a perfect word, because what we're really seeing is the dream of celebrity being commodified. This was a time of exploding media culture, and the Allen & Ginter tobacco company understood that linking actresses with cigarettes would equate fame with aspiration in an entirely new way. Curator: So, tell me more—what does it mean to take someone’s image and suddenly make it part of this engine of consumption? Does it transform their essence somehow? Poor Minnie; does she get any say? Editor: That's the crux of it, isn't it? These women became a means to sell products, their personhood often secondary. The gaze in this portrait isn’t of power, but quiet participation in a larger economic engine. Where's agency in the face of cultural consumption? Curator: I wonder about Minnie, the actress. Is this her headshot? Is this image building towards roles, or is the "actress" a second tier, beneath her use for branding? It seems like there’s layers upon layers of identity happening here. Editor: Exactly. And the “Little Beauties” cigarettes connection adds another layer of discomfort. Tobacco companies often targeted women as consumers and attached themes of beauty and thinness, knowing the deadly effects all the while. It was the marketing of illness by preying on insecurity, with Minnie’s image playing a complicit part. Curator: Thinking about that level of manipulation just changes the temperature of the piece; I now see it tinged with regret, or a strange dissonance. But the feathers in her hat are kind of fantastic... such an evocative image of aspiration, and yet... tainted. Editor: Those feathers speak to the opulence of the Gilded Age, an illusion constructed on shaky foundations of class, race, and gender exploitation. But at least we are viewing it now through an ethical lens, attempting to give names and stories back to subjects rendered silent by commercial forces. Curator: Agreed. It's definitely a poignant reminder of how advertising seeps into the very fabric of our lives and our perceptions of beauty. Thanks, Minnie, for stirring all this up today, even after so long. Editor: Indeed. This artwork invites a sustained meditation on who profits, and what is lost, when identity becomes capital.