Tucker, 1st Base, Baltimore Orioles, from the Old Judge series (N172) for Old Judge Cigarettes 1888

Editor: So, this is "Tucker, 1st Base, Baltimore Orioles" from 1888, a gelatin silver print from the Old Judge Cigarettes series. It feels almost… archaeological, a fragment of early baseball culture preserved in this tobacco product promotion. What stands out to you? Curator: The interesting element is the entanglement of sport, image production and consumption. Consider the materiality: gelatin silver print, mass-produced not as high art but as a commodity insert. Its purpose was to sell cigarettes, embedding this image of athletic prowess within a system of addictive consumption. Editor: So, it's less about Tucker himself and more about… what it represented? Curator: Exactly. Tucker’s image, captured through photography, became a tool of the Goodwin & Company cigarette factory. We have to think about the labour involved in photography and printing at the time, too. It's about how baseball heroes become commercial assets through image-making, tied directly to the labor and materials that create that image. Where does art and marketing blur here, don’t you think? Editor: Definitely makes me see the photo in a different light – as less of a celebration of the sport itself, and more a relic of consumer culture. Curator: Precisely! These images become traces of that specific moment of production and distribution of capital, a commodity-image designed to incite purchase, a visual cog in the wheel of industrialising leisure and habits. Editor: Wow. I never would have considered this photograph within such a socioeconomic context. This has made me rethink baseball cards in an entirely new way. Curator: The value is truly not in the aesthetic qualities of the image but the ways that it illuminates social, cultural, and manufacturing relationships.