Miantonomoh, U.S.N., from the Famous Ships series (N50) for Virginia Brights Cigarettes 1895

Editor: This is "Miantonomoh, U.S.N.", a trading card from 1895 by Allen & Ginter, a company known for cigarettes. It combines drawing, printmaking and photography in one collectible image. I’m struck by how it feels so ordinary, yet also presents this immense symbol of military power. What's your take? Curator: This card encapsulates a shift in how we perceive value and production. Forget "high art" – this is about mass consumption, material processes. The paper itself, the ink, the printing techniques... these were becoming increasingly standardized and accessible, influencing the dissemination of images and ideas. How does the ship, a potent symbol of industrial and military might, become just another element in this matrix of capitalist production? Editor: So, the value isn't in some inherent artistic quality but in its place within a commercial system? Curator: Exactly! Consider the labor involved. Who were the designers, the printers, the workers in the tobacco factory? How were they compensated? The card isn’t just an image of a ship, it’s a trace of a complex network of labor and resource extraction, bundled together to sell cigarettes. Notice, too, the very disposability implied – this wasn't meant to last forever. Editor: That makes me think about our current obsession with collectibles, how even ephemeral objects become fetishized commodities. Curator: Precisely! These seemingly insignificant cards tell us volumes about the social and economic currents of the time and about the industrial process by which popular values and desires get their tangible forms. It is not a neutral carrier of an image; it is an element in a process. Editor: That’s a really different way to look at art, or rather, "art." Thanks for expanding my perspective! Curator: My pleasure. Hopefully, we can start asking the critical questions that unravel how artworks and commodities mediate reality.