Card Number 320, Laura Burt, from the Actors and Actresses series (N145-3) issued by Duke Sons & Co. to promote Cross Cut Cigarettes 1880s

Curator: A delicate yearning… that's my first blush feeling looking at "Card Number 320, Laura Burt," from the Actors and Actresses series. There’s something about her gaze, averted just so, that pulls you into a story untold. Editor: Indeed. And if we examine it through a formal lens, this photographic print, issued in the 1880s by W. Duke, Sons & Co., it becomes clear how carefully constructed it is to capture, commodify, and broadcast a certain feminine ideal. Note how the pearls around her neck bisect the negative space created by the angle of the neck; see, the pearls are the main connection between background and form. Curator: Commodification? Oh, absolutely. Laura Burt, reduced to a cigarette card. And the pearls, what does the angle have to do with their existence, how they become an item that shows her ideal "rich" state... but look closer—there’s a vulnerability there, in the slight droop of her lips, the soft shadows under her eyes that goes beyond mere image promotion. I want to connect and almost rescue the poor thing from time. Editor: Agreed, there's definitely more to this artifact. Yet consider how pictorialism as a style softens those vulnerabilities. Through manipulation of light and focus, her imperfections are rendered… palatable. Look at how the focal length changes and brings that subtle softening that blends portrait, commercial, and early art photographic. It allows for a wider range of consumption... a photograph so personal, and impersonal... interesting paradox Curator: A smoke screen of beauty, perhaps? Something that reminds you of art deco with that pose so clear and forward? That idea makes it even sadder to ponder, to turn Laura into this kind of simulacrum. Alluring, yes, but distant too. It is so much from 1880, very new in photographic capture, almost making her seem unreachable. I’d love to know how she felt about it all. Did she ever see a stack of these cards and think about what this pose could mean or convey. Editor: And maybe she saw those cards and thought, "Success!" The printing has rendered her image durable, lasting. If it did mean commercial endurance, W. Duke, Sons & Co. accomplished a coup de grace of product imaging with this one.