Ada Van Loan, from the Actors and Actresses series (N171) for Old Judge Cigarettes 1886 - 1890

Editor: Here we have a card, part of a series actually, featuring Ada Van Loan, from the Actors and Actresses series made by Goodwin & Company for Old Judge Cigarettes, sometime between 1886 and 1890. It’s a photograph, printed, and there’s something provocative, almost rebellious about it. It definitely grabs your attention with how the subject is styled and presented. How do you interpret this work? Curator: From a materialist perspective, let’s consider the cigarette card itself. It’s mass-produced, meant to be collected and traded. What does the photograph, in this context, tell us about labor and consumption in the late 19th century? Editor: It's a commercial product, advertising cigarettes by using the image of an actress, suggesting perhaps aspiration and glamour? Curator: Exactly. But consider the materiality of the image. Photography made it relatively cheap to reproduce images. And it’s Ada Van Loan herself: her body, her performance of femininity, become commodities. This blurring of lines between high art, portraiture, and cheap, throwaway consumerism – that's where the real tension lies. Think about the labor involved, too. Not just Van Loan, but the factory workers producing the cards, the tobacco… Editor: So, it’s less about her beauty and more about how that beauty is being used and consumed by a broader public? Curator: Precisely! It reveals the social structures at play and how art, in its broadest definition, functions within a system of production and consumption. Consider too the intended consumer, the target audience for these cigarettes and their presumed desires and fantasies, that speaks volumes. Editor: I see it differently now! It's a tiny object, but holds a whole world of economic and social meanings related to materiality, consumer culture and gender. Thanks! Curator: Exactly. It's about digging beneath the surface and seeing the gears turning.