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

Curator: This is "Miss Raymond," one of the Actresses series produced by Kinney Brothers around 1890 to promote their Sweet Caporal Cigarettes. The piece combines photography, drawing, and print techniques. Editor: She looks...whimsical. The soft, sepia tones lend her an air of antiquated charm, but there's something slightly melancholy in the upward gaze, as if longing for something just out of reach. Curator: Absolutely. The upward gaze has a lot of established symbology tied to yearning, spirituality. In a commercial image, though, one could argue she's perhaps looking towards a future made brighter by Sweet Caporal cigarettes, right? Editor: Perhaps. But her cap – it seems both festive and slightly absurd, almost like a court jester's hat, but demure. This ambivalence in dress mirrors the uncertainty of nascent fame. Curator: True, she is adorned, as actresses of the time were, for spectacle. Actresses were the celebrities, the ‘influencers’ of the age. Their likenesses were highly sought-after for advertising because they embodied the ideals of beauty and aspiration, right? Editor: And aspirations are tied to perception; the image appears aged by design, mimicking painting rather than simply documenting reality. This, in turn, links new industries like tobacco with an "elevated" class of object. Curator: Right, so she's a carefully constructed image, designed to evoke certain desires. She is both a personality and a commodity at once, a perfect example of late 19th-century celebrity culture using iconography from antiquity to further enhance its reach. Editor: Examining the piece formally, the composition creates a feeling of distance. Her averted eyes, the vast negative space… we are observers only. It creates both admiration and longing—which cleverly drives desire. Curator: An apt reading. We’ve traced the various elements interwoven here – celebrity, commerce, cultural symbols and it shows the depth to these small, almost forgotten objects. Editor: I agree; examining those formal structures only deepens how images shape our culture and aspirations, something easily dismissed at first glance.