Card Number 150, Adelina Detchon, from the Actors and Actresses series (N145-5) issued by Duke Sons & Co. to promote Cameo Cigarettes 1880s

Editor: This is a curious find! "Card Number 150, Adelina Detchon," a photograph from the 1880s by W. Duke, Sons & Co. It's printed on what looks like aged paper, giving it a wonderfully sepia tone. It also reads "Duke's Cameo Cigarettes Are the Best". What do you see when you look at it? Curator: I see the commodification of beauty, or rather celebrity. An albumen print like this was mass-produced. Adelina Detchon, whoever she was, her image becomes intrinsically linked to tobacco, an easily consumed product. It highlights the developing mechanisms of celebrity and consumption in the late 19th century, doesn’t it? The drawing itself, used as a print medium, reinforces how this was an industrial, repeatable image meant for broad distribution. Editor: So, it's not really about art for art's sake then. More like...early advertising? Curator: Precisely. It's fascinating to consider the social context of production. Who were the workers who manufactured these cards? What were their labor conditions? How were the materials sourced? It asks us to question traditional art historical narratives and consider the entire system surrounding the image, rather than just the aesthetics of the actress. Think about it, an image circulating due to cigarettes. Where have we seen that same pattern more recently? Editor: That really reframes my perspective. So it becomes a lens through which to analyze consumer culture and labor, more than simply a pretty picture. Thank you for making me think this through! Curator: And thank you, your observations give us another reason to appreciate this artifact of labor, marketing, and art history all rolled into one small piece.