Card 672, Miss Morgan, from the Actors and Actresses series (N45, Type 2) for Virginia Brights Cigarettes 1885 - 1891

Curator: What a pensive mood. This small card captures Miss Morgan in what feels like a moment of quiet reflection. Editor: Indeed. Immediately striking is the physicality of it. This isn’t some grand canvas, but a tiny rectangle designed for mass consumption, tucked into packs of Virginia Brights Cigarettes sometime between 1885 and 1891. Curator: Right, a series card—ephemeral, ubiquitous. And yet, even on this small scale, the portrait manages to convey a certain longing. Notice how she gazes upwards, hands clasped beneath her chin, as if in reverie. The pearl necklace and softly styled hair amplify this dreamlike state. It resonates with the hopes projected onto actresses during this era, and perhaps also with the dreams of the cigarette-buying public. Editor: It speaks to the changing industrial landscape. Allen & Ginter employed a workforce—largely women—to produce these cards on an industrial scale. Photography, drawing, printmaking… all flattened and reproduced to fuel desire and sell nicotine. We tend to romanticize the portrait, but its significance here hinges on labor, commodity, and distribution. Curator: Interesting how the commodification you mentioned, and the fleeting nature of this thing also adds layers of complexity to Miss Morgan's image. Is this meant to endure, like a painted portrait in a stately home? No. It’s intended to be collected, traded, perhaps discarded—a ghost of celebrity preserved within layers of commercial aspiration. Editor: Exactly. It reflects a transient beauty manufactured for a fleeting moment of desire. It isn't timeless. Even now it bears marks and imperfections acquired through its circulation within social, commercial circuits. It’s a document of its own use. Curator: It speaks volumes about both personal dreams and shifting societal forces. The actress's face—her expression, her posture— becomes a vessel through which these broader desires and anxieties are communicated. Editor: Absolutely. It reminds us that even the most intimate-seeming image can be deeply rooted in the processes of its making and circulation.