John Wesley "Jack" Glassock, Shortstop, Indianapolis, from the series Old Judge Cigarettes 1887

Curator: It's quite striking, isn't it? I’m immediately struck by how physically present he is, even across time. Editor: He looks tired! Sort of stooped, really, as if gravity has been working on him longer than it should. Curator: Goodwin & Company captured this photograph of John Wesley "Jack" Glassock, an Indianapolis shortstop, in 1887. It’s a gelatin-silver print originally used as a baseball card insert for Old Judge Cigarettes. It feels wonderfully commonplace to me, a frozen slice of late 19th-century Americana. Editor: Cigarettes and baseball…an advertising match made in capitalist heaven. I’m drawn to what these images did. Mass-produced, affordable… They really democratized representation in a way. Whose image got circulated, who got seen, and why? The burgeoning fame system and its effect on the laboring body. Curator: I'd not thought of it that way. He has an interesting stance; knees bent, weight forward… He’s so ready, anticipating the next play. There is such stillness and poise in the face. It contradicts the lower body, so in action, so prepared. Editor: Right, the “ready” stance we perform constantly for capital’s extraction. It's interesting thinking about how sport becomes entwined with notions of masculine labor and spectacle. There's something haunting about seeing him reduced to an advertisement. His skill, his history, boiled down to marketing. Curator: Marketing success! Glassock, who was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1994, continued playing professionally well into the 1910s. Looking into his eyes now I get a strong sense of his individual energy. To be here still after over 130 years. Amazing. Editor: And it gives me pause, this commercial use of a Black-and-white man to endorse a product linked to deadly habits, speaks volumes about historical commercial and sporting ethics! An essential conversation we must have, as viewers and as actors in our own cultural stage. Curator: I do love how one small image can hold such expansive ideas and, ultimately, make me ask myself more important questions. Editor: Precisely; it is this dialectic between representation, body, labor, capital, history and individual agency that moves me. Let’s dig deeper.