Card Number 4, Sadie Martinot, from the Actors and Actresses series (N145-6) issued by Duke Sons & Co. to promote Duke Cigarettes 1880s

Curator: There's something haunting about this sepia-toned photograph, isn't there? It almost feels like gazing into a forgotten dream. Editor: Indeed. What you are looking at is a card, from the 1880s. "Card Number 4, Sadie Martinot," part of the "Actors and Actresses" series issued by Duke Sons & Co. to promote Duke Cigarettes. Curator: Cigarettes! Of course, the bygone era is giving it away! She has such a beautiful and melancholic expression… almost like she is gazing into the future knowing its fleeting. What was the material of choice? Is this photography on drawing or paper? Editor: A really interesting question. It is indeed photography printed on toned paper. Duke used images to offer a narrative and aspiration with products largely targeted at working class men. Let's unpack that sadness, as it is linked to how these images worked as both representations of women and as capitalist objects for commerce. Curator: Sadie, darling. Were you even aware that the gaze captured in this drawing would become, ahem, commodified. How fascinating that this small card portrays Sadie as being so distant and vulnerable, when these were cards promoting male pleasure, quite literally, in the shape of cigarettes. It really makes you question the male gaze and power at the time, in terms of media depiction. Editor: Precisely! Women, particularly actresses, were both celebrated and objectified, and their images circulated within a system designed to generate profit, really contributing to a patriarchal system. The drawing almost softens that exploitative reality. How it offers itself between photography and drawing really brings together these themes too: like are you even looking at a real human? What IS real at all?! Curator: In a sense it all felt so innocent, like a simpler time… Editor: But it wasn't, right? The subtle exploitations and erasures… this little cigarette card is a powerful microcosm of those dynamics. Curator: True! A card with big questions—it's amazing how art can spark these dialogues across time. Editor: Indeed! And this dialogue shows a mirror to the times! We become Martinot, we become commodified and exploited by various media and institutions! A powerful thought.