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

Editor: This is "Miss Robina," a promotional card from 1890, part of the Actresses series by Kinney Brothers for Sweet Caporal Cigarettes. It uses drawing and photography to create a portrait. It’s fascinating how fragile it looks, given it was meant for mass distribution. What strikes you about this piece? Curator: Immediately, I see the convergence of industry, labor, and representation. Consider the cigarette card itself: a cheap, mass-produced object intended to drive consumption. Photography allowed for the easy duplication of images, enabling widespread dissemination of "Miss Robina’s" image. How does the use of photography itself tie into the mass production aspect here? Editor: Well, photography democratized portraiture, making images accessible to a wider public, moving away from painted portraits available only to wealthy patrons. Curator: Precisely! It’s also interesting to note the societal context. Actresses, like Miss Robina, were some of the first "celebrities." The image here highlights the means of circulation and commodification. Were these women active participants, or were they, themselves, another kind of product? The image also seems torn, or unfinished, and maybe that speaks to some idea of impermanence? Editor: That’s a fascinating question. They gained visibility but perhaps at the expense of control over their own image and how it was being used to market tobacco. The imperfection maybe captures the idea that a woman is commodified and not necessarily perfect. Curator: The material analysis allows us to unpick these complicated systems, viewing the artwork not in isolation but in the larger cultural landscape. What a single card can tell us! Editor: I never thought about a tobacco card having so many layers! Seeing how mass production and consumption play out through one portrait really changes my perspective.