Annie Pixley, from the Actors and Actresses series (N145-8) issued by Duke Sons & Co. to promote Duke Cigarettes 1890 - 1895

Curator: Here we have a print from the Actors and Actresses series, published by W. Duke, Sons & Co. between 1890 and 1895, as a promotional item for Duke Cigarettes. This particular card features Annie Pixley. Editor: You know, it’s interesting. My first thought looking at this image is the sheer sense of gesture, like a hummingbird poised in mid-air. It seems a touch faded now, all sepia tones. Curator: These cards served as advertisements and collectables. They are really interesting when considered as tools that simultaneously reinforced celebrity culture and evolving ideas around femininity. These tobacco cards were often collected by men. Consider the implications of this circulation. Editor: Right. It’s fascinating, thinking about that power dynamic, really. There she is, in her full skirt and lacy blouse—presented as this ideal, while actually being consumed almost like the cigarette itself. Makes you wonder about Annie's own agency in this. Did she see it as empowering or exploitative? Or perhaps both, like so many performers? Curator: It's precisely that ambiguity which fascinates me. Looking at the details in the image, the costume for instance, we get glimpses of the performative self, intentionally constructed to attract admiration and sell a fantasy. Consider, too, the gazes implicit here – both Pixley looking toward an audience and the male collectors who desired these photographs. The whole spectacle reveals more about its sociohistorical conditions than any individual involved. Editor: Absolutely. There's a pre-digital vulnerability to these early prints—a soft vulnerability captured, not with the sharpness of a modern lens but through the gentle gauze of bygone times. She feels closer because of it somehow. Curator: Indeed. Viewing it now, more than a century later, opens up multiple perspectives and questions on artifice, celebrity, and commodification. Editor: Right, like a phantom limb that continues to remind us of a bygone era, and our ongoing performance as individuals in it.