New Jersey, from Flags of the States and Territories (N11) for Allen & Ginter Cigarettes Brands 1888

Curator: Here we have "New Jersey, from Flags of the States and Territories," created around 1888 by Allen & Ginter. It's a colour pencil graphic print. Editor: It has an undeniably nostalgic charm, doesn't it? The quaint rendering of industry, offset by the romanticised flag above... there's a tension, but a visually harmonious one. Curator: The composition is structured around contrasting zones, indeed. At the bottom we have an industrial landscape fading into the background, sharply distinct from the azure flag that dominates the upper register, doesn't it? Note how the chromatic unity comes from the gold tassels from the flag reflecting down into the ochres and browns in the depiction of industry. Editor: Exactly, and those very distinct registers are ripe with sociopolitical context. I see a romanticized depiction of the benefits of industrialization masking its actual impact: pollution as a cost of liberty and prosperity is visible in the smog coming from factory pipes. The flag almost idealizes it, with Liberty, in her draped robes and prosperity, offering an abundant floral bounty! Curator: Interesting point, because that abundance doesn't seem fully congruent. Note that "liberty and prosperity," as it's proclaimed, floats like a ribbon *on* the blue ground; in truth, it’s fully integrated, it’s as if liberty is, essentially, the very ground, if we conceive of ground, here, as figure, so as not to impose a figure-ground relationship! Editor: And of course it's crucial to unpack how 'liberty' and 'prosperity' are understood through a specific, undoubtedly skewed, historical lens in the late 19th century, in the so-called gilded age. Who exactly had access to this Liberty and Prosperity? Certainly not the labourers in those very factories, the Lenape people who were there centuries before colonization, or the Black community dealing with reconstruction. Curator: Your emphasis underscores the work’s fascinating ambiguity, or more specifically, polysemy—there's such rich multivalence in Allen & Ginter’s strategic deployment of visual and rhetorical forms. Editor: Absolutely. This image isn’t simply about aesthetic representation. Curator: A close look unveils many possibilities for a work as layered and concise as this one. Editor: And allows us to engage in some critical, much needed historical investigation.