Sadie Martinot, from the Actresses series (N245) issued by Kinney Brothers to promote Sweet Caporal Cigarettes 1890

Curator: Here we have "Sadie Martinot," a portrait that comes to us from an unusual place: a cigarette card issued around 1890 by Kinney Brothers to promote Sweet Caporal Cigarettes. Editor: Immediately I see layers. Literal layers in that frothy dress and that absurd hat. But also layers of meaning, of social context... I mean, tobacco cards! What a fascinating bit of material culture, using actresses to hawk vice. It has a touch of irony and humor in how this everyday object gives insight into a specific era. Curator: Precisely! Sadie herself gazes upwards, a delicate profile framed by all that lace and those ribbons. The light is gentle, almost reverential. What do you suppose it was like to be a celebrated actress whose face was on…packaging? It is a sort of deification. Editor: The mass production aspect is so compelling here, this beautiful woman reproduced ad infinitum on cheap cardstock, tucked into cigarette packs. Who made these cards? Where? What were their working conditions like? You have these images traveling widely, becoming incredibly commonplace. This image becomes utterly detached from the artist who probably produced it. The art here resides less in a particular brushstroke than it does in an exploitative system. Curator: Perhaps. Yet even in a system, choices are made. Someone posed Sadie, chose the light, perhaps even retouched the image. Do we know if she approved? Or was it merely a product of studio machinery and a lack of control? Even the card itself has a presence – it is no grand canvas or imposing marble – a modest little card. It feels more like something slipped into a secret love letter, and here we see a relic from a time that has lost much of its glamour and elegance. Editor: True. Even the choice of sepia-toned photography lends the image an air of refinement. This piece raises a lot of questions about what the industry looked like at the time. Cigarettes themselves – what materials made them up, where were those grown? How were the tobacconists impacted? There is this interesting web between the glamorous presentation of Martinot and this wider ecosystem of resources and power dynamics behind the photograph itself. Curator: You bring such valuable layers to my interpretation here. Before our discussion I could have only commented on the glamourous profile, but now I will also find the hidden, often untold, processes in the portrait of Sadie Martinot. Editor: And likewise, the glamour, too, can draw in the viewer with this false sense of glitz that covers up production to lure the consumer in.