M. Mallsi, from the Actors and Actresses series (N145-7) issued by Duke Sons & Co. to promote Duke Cigarettes 1880s

This photograph of M. Mallsi was printed by W. Duke, Sons & Co. as a promotional card for Duke Cigarettes, around 1900. It's a modest thing, really, just a slip of card stock with an image and some typography printed on top. The picture would have been made using a mechanical printing process, probably photogravure, which allowed for mass production. Think about it: the photograph would have been taken by a studio photographer, posed with lighting; then an engraver skillfully translated that image onto a printing plate. Finally, factory workers would have fed reams of paper through machines to produce thousands of these cards every day, inserted into cigarette packs. When you consider all this labor, both skilled and unskilled, the card takes on a new dimension. It's no longer just a picture of an actress, but a material record of labor and production, folded into a larger story of commerce and consumption. What does it mean to turn art into advertisement?