Portrait, from the Women's Portraits series (N198) issued by Wm. S. Kimball & Co. 1889

Editor: This is "Portrait, from the Women's Portraits series (N198)" by Wm. S. Kimball & Co., created around 1889. It's currently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This feels like a photograph trying to be a drawing – it's got a dreamy, soft focus, and I'm really curious about the medium. What strikes you most about this portrait? Curator: The sepia tone really gets me – it whispers of old photograph albums found in attic trunks, don't you think? It’s fascinating how it occupies this liminal space, you're right, between photography and drawing. This portrait seems to be a mass-produced print imitating fine art, made to be distributed with tobacco products! How ironic, offering up beauty alongside vice. Do you think it succeeds? Editor: I do see that tension! It's… ambitious, but the softness makes it feel sincere. Maybe the mass production aspect takes away a bit of its unique personality, paradoxically. What was the intention behind blending the styles? Curator: I wonder if the softness was intended to 'glamorize', to soften the sharp edges of reality and present an idealized image of women? And it makes me wonder who *she* was. Is this someone real, do you think, or an amalgamation of an era’s idea of beauty? That very blurriness you see also shields us from getting too close. Editor: That’s a point, like she's deliberately kept at arm's length. This conversation has me reconsidering it - from a simple portrait to a commentary on manufactured beauty, quite literally sold alongside tobacco. Curator: Absolutely. And art, you see, often smuggles itself in disguised as commerce, doesn't it? It’s delightful when the past manages to startle the present into fresh thought.