Card Number 118, Carrie Duke, from the Actors and Actresses series (N145-2) issued by Duke Sons & Co. to promote Cross Cut Cigarettes 1880s

Curator: Well, this is… evocative. There’s a real sense of performativity here. Editor: That’s right. What we’re looking at is "Card Number 118, Carrie Duke, from the Actors and Actresses series (N145-2) issued by Duke Sons & Co. to promote Cross Cut Cigarettes,” dating from the 1880s. These cards, small prints, were included in cigarette packs. Curator: So, immediate context—tobacco. Consumerism. These small cards as instruments for product endorsement and social currency. We see the industrialization of leisure through commodities. Editor: Exactly. The company, W. Duke, Sons & Co., heavily relied on new technologies for mass production and distribution. Think about the labor involved: from tobacco fields to printing presses. This is all carefully crafted to create a specific image, which has less to do with Duke herself and more with marketing a lifestyle. Curator: And Carrie Duke…she embodies idealized feminine beauty of the time, simultaneously conforming to and performing against constraints of Victorian society. Notice the costuming, simultaneously suggestive and restricted. Editor: Her agency, or lack thereof, becomes interesting. Who *was* she beyond being a model for this company's product, or if we think about "performance" from labor studies… What does this sort of advertisement work mean for the actress/model, Duke, or the female workforce overall in this era? Curator: Absolutely. Her carefully crafted gaze suggests knowingness. Is she empowered or merely an objectified pawn in the marketplace of desires? She is holding a very obvious prop across her legs: is there something subversive occurring or simply a symbol of available power? Editor: I think she represents a calculated strategy – the construction of the modern feminine identity as both commodity and consumer. The interplay of class, gender, and visual culture becomes particularly resonant. Curator: Examining it now, what is remarkable is how complex a relatively mundane mass-produced object can be. The card is more than just its face value: it functions as a window into 19th-century anxieties and aspirations. Editor: I agree. It asks us to think about the very making of cultural norms. A photograph like this—intended for fleeting enjoyment—ends up provoking lasting reflections about how we got here.