Card Number 27, Adelaide Detchon, from the Actors and Actresses series (N145-2) issued by Duke Sons & Co. to promote Cross Cut Cigarettes 1880s

Curator: Immediately striking! There’s something melancholic and also strangely confident about the way this woman gazes into the distance. Editor: Indeed. Let’s consider "Card Number 27, Adelaide Detchon" from the Actors and Actresses series (N145-2), printed in the 1880s by W. Duke, Sons & Co. These cards were promotional items distributed with Cross Cut Cigarettes, which makes the juxtaposition of art, commerce, and the representation of women in the Gilded Age all the more relevant. Curator: A cigarette card…fascinating! Looking at the materiality of this printed photograph raises many questions about production and value. Was this image, reproduced en masse, considered disposable? How did it function in the broader culture of commodity consumption? Editor: Exactly. Consider its circulation and how the celebrity image intersected with the marketing of tobacco. These cards offered a glimpse into a world of actors and actresses for the everyday consumer, normalizing, in some sense, the social sphere they inhabited and democratizing art through consumer culture. It's located in the Metropolitan Museum of Art here in New York now. A definite sign of a changed appreciation! Curator: What is interesting to me, too, is how the reproductive technology impacts the photograph itself. The sepia tone flattens details of texture, creating almost an imagined version of celebrity and idealization achieved not just through the subject but the photographic processes. Also notice the way her body faces front and her head angled in a sharp contrast. It is an interesting balance. Editor: Agreed. The inclusion of classical motifs—the vase with figures and even her draped gown, create an immediate, easily-read sense of timeless beauty and high art even while promoting the distinctly modern indulgence of cigarette smoking. And by circulating the image of these famous faces within mass-produced commercial products, social roles and class distinctions can begin to blur and influence one another in interesting ways. Curator: So the image itself is almost immaterial - just a vehicle, the tobacco the center point? Editor: Not quite. But the commercial aspect enabled accessibility of visual arts for more people, I suppose. I think that’s why I find it interesting, anyway. Curator: An accessible visual pleasure, produced en masse alongside a harmful product…it's a telling reminder of that era and really gets you thinking.