Card 663, Miss Johnston, from the Actors and Actresses series (N45, Type 2) for Virginia Brights Cigarettes 1885 - 1891

Curator: At first glance, this small portrait evokes the charm of a bygone era. There is something about the sepia tone and delicate detail that's really compelling. Editor: You're right. It has a sweetness to it, a certain formality. There’s almost an echo of an idealized past, carefully constructed, if you will. Curator: Indeed. This piece, entitled "Card 663, Miss Johnston, from the Actors and Actresses series" produced around 1885-1891, is a photograph. Allen & Ginter, the producers, printed and packaged the cards along with their Virginia Brights Cigarettes. Editor: Ah, so part of the growing marketing strategies designed to associate commodities with ideals like beauty and success, thus reinforcing the period’s emerging celebrity culture. And using actresses—figures of fantasy, embodying a spectacle. This small format ensured it would reach a broad audience too, right? Curator: Precisely! Note how "Miss Johnston," her name scripted elegantly along the bottom, occupies nearly the whole frame. The dress, with its pronounced vertical stripes, hints at symbolic display – power, performance. I wonder who chose the details of the image to reinforce that symbolic content. Editor: The visual rhetoric here is very particular. And it begs the question of how such images helped establish and reinforce social hierarchies, or conversely, offer avenues for imagining different social possibilities through those ideals it sells alongside its cigarettes. I suspect they intended something straightforward—promoting glamour in general to the growing class of leisure consumers, perhaps. Curator: So true. And yet, for me, this portrait of Miss Johnston resonates not just with commercial aspirations, but also as an intimate relic—a tiny window into late 19th-century desires and ideals. We see in it something far more complex. Editor: It speaks volumes beyond the cigarette brand. Each detail invites us to decode the messages from that time about status, performance, and public image. And these cards show how it made its way through social strata. A truly unique form of public portraiture, mass-produced and carefully placed. Curator: Yes, precisely! And it allows for this deeper discussion on values of culture. Editor: A cultural artifact with its own story. Intriguing!