Leila Farrell, from the Actors and Actresses series (N45, Type 1) for Virginia Brights Cigarettes 1885 - 1891

Curator: So, we’re looking at a portrait from the Actors and Actresses series, specifically Leila Farrell, from the N45 type 1 cards, designed for Virginia Brights Cigarettes between 1885 and 1891. It combines photography, drawing and print. Editor: Immediately I see sepia tones, it's muted. There's almost a dreamlike, fleeting quality. It evokes something fragile, yet enduring too—like a pressed flower in an old book. Curator: Precisely, the means of production involved a photographic image likely enhanced with artistic rendering before being mass-produced. These cards were essentially advertisements, a commodification of celebrity intertwined with tobacco consumption. Editor: Yes, strange how the human desire for beauty can become entwined in even something as mundane as buying a pack of smokes! Do you think Leila ever imagined this likeness on something meant to be discarded with cigarette butts? Curator: It's quite revealing how such promotional items blur the boundaries between art, advertising, and industrial output. This speaks volumes about how perceptions of value shift according to material and market forces. These weren't simply artistic endeavors but tangible products of capitalist machinery. Editor: I feel something else, though, looking at her. A wisp of her essence is still palpable through the old paper. It's as though I can detect something she felt while she had that hat on! A fleeting and eternal image now made ghostly with the marks of age, use, commerce. Curator: The ghostly feeling that you describe stems perhaps from the distance of time and the faded inks but also the ephemeral nature of fame and how industrial printing grants a semblance of immortality through widespread distribution. The materials are aged; paper fibers oxidized, yet here she remains, albeit in a changed state, reflecting shifting aesthetic and societal tastes. Editor: So in its way, then, it reminds us of so much—about industry and beauty and lost actresses. Quite remarkable how all of this feeling emerges from something meant to sell cigarettes! Curator: Yes. Exactly. We can reflect on this conflation of fame and advertising—or commerce and production--and draw conclusions on how they impact the current nature of art.