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

Curator: Here we have Leontine Morgan, an actress, captured around 1890. It's one of a series of promotional prints for Sweet Caporal Cigarettes, produced by the Kinney Brothers Tobacco Company. The photograph is suggestive of the carte de visite prints prevalent at the time. Editor: Oh, there's such a wistful charm to it! She looks caught in mid-curtsy, or perhaps a secret little dance just for herself. And the light is amazing! Everything is a soft glow, all sepia tones... it feels very intimate despite, well, the blatant advertising. Curator: It's interesting you mention intimacy, given the print's origins. We have an actress presented as a desirable figure linked explicitly with a commodity: tobacco. These promotional materials circulated widely, normalizing both celebrity culture and consumerism. It represents a fascinating confluence of labor; the actresses who relied on their visibility, the workforce producing the cigarettes, and the networks distributing images for the sake of branding and product marketing. Editor: Right, because that kind of image has always been with us... still, doesn't it tug at something deep? I imagine being one of the workers whose labor produced these, gazing on this lovely Leontine in print…I would imagine things might change for me someday. This one small picture...I feel so strongly a kind of beauty mixed with that strange early modern yearning. I like it and all its contradictions, both intimate and remote! Curator: That's astute. The production methods allowed for a broad distribution, essentially democratizing access to a kind of idealized image of femininity and stardom, but tethered to product consumption and a certain level of social division between labor and aspiration. It makes you wonder how different demographic groups reacted and interacted with those promotional materials... Editor: Absolutely. I suppose what touches me is its aura; the light, the dress. A story trapped in a photograph of a woman from a past era of capitalism. Curator: Indeed, these artifacts invite us to examine the labor conditions and networks inherent in their production. Editor: And what yearnings they have ignited along the way! Thank you for such a thought provoking experience.