Alma Stanley, from the Actresses and Celebrities series (N60, Type 2) promoting Little Beauties Cigarettes for Allen & Ginter brand tobacco products 1887

Curator: Immediately, I sense an echo of faded elegance, a delicate beauty suspended in time. It reminds me of peering into an old music box. Editor: Precisely! This is a photographic print from 1887, an albumen print that was part of Allen & Ginter's "Actresses and Celebrities" series, intended to promote Little Beauties Cigarettes. This particular image captures Alma Stanley, a prominent actress of the era. Curator: Ah, a puff of theatrical smoke! The fact it’s attached to advertising slightly sullies its aesthetic grace for me—but I adore how her gaze drifts upward. Is it hope? Disenchantment? Or just simply an actress striking a pose, playing with a feeling? Editor: The composition reinforces that upward gaze, drawing the eye along a diagonal axis from her shoulder to the top of the frame, emphasized by the soft curves of her fur hat and cape. There's a deliberate arrangement of form there; she seems poised between visibility and potential erasure. It speaks to anxieties surrounding performance and identity at that time. Curator: The print is so wonderfully sepia-toned... Almost monochromatic. I love the softness. It’s a glamour shot that manages to exude vulnerability; that tension between exposure and privacy is utterly fascinating. Makes me want to know her thoughts! Editor: The choice of albumen print certainly contributes to that diffused, dreamy quality. And consider the Japonisme influence detectable in such advertising cards of that period—evident in the emphasis on the beauty of the actress as an object of aesthetic contemplation. It’s not simply about selling cigarettes. It also speaks to an evolving artistic sensibility. Curator: It’s hard not to read some complicated, slightly unsavory subtext knowing that, while lovely, this portrait existed only to push tobacco. But stepping away from that, I am happy that such lovely artwork can exist even when at the service of commerce. Editor: Indeed, and analyzing it gives a richer understanding of 19th-century intersections of consumer culture, celebrity, and artistic innovation. These were times that changed very fast for artists.