Card Number 332, Dora Wiley, from the Actors and Actresses series (N145-3) issued by Duke Sons & Co. to promote Cross Cut Cigarettes 1880s

Editor: So, this is "Card Number 332, Dora Wiley," a portrait dating back to the 1880s by W. Duke, Sons & Co. It’s a gelatin-silver print, quite small, intended as advertisement for cigarettes. I am really fascinated by the old-fashioned presentation! What kind of impressions bubble up for you looking at it? Curator: Ah, Dora Wiley! A relic of a bygone era, isn’t she? For me, it’s like stumbling upon a faded dream. The photographic techniques of the 1880s, already creating these "enhanced" images—kind of makes you wonder if there was an equivalent of photoshopping then! There is almost a surreal staging here, somewhere between reality and fabrication... don’t you feel that? Editor: Definitely. She appears against a romanticized cloudy backdrop, but the focus is sharply on her. I also note the strange juxtaposition: a cigarette card elevating an actress into a miniature work of art. Does it blur the lines of art, commerce, and celebrity? Curator: Absolutely. Commerce has always had its flirtations with beauty, hasn't it? And who gets remembered—Dora or the cigarettes? Perhaps the work exists only to bring her back into public attention! The cigarette brand borrowed Dora's celebrity, a transaction of image that, in some way, brings to question ideas around authorship and worth. Editor: Fascinating. Now I wonder, what did people *really* think about this photograph in its own time? What story was Duke aiming to communicate to buyers of the day? Curator: You have raised great questions, it makes me question everything, perhaps a question that will be in our minds forever.