From the Actors and Actresses series (N45, Type 5) for Virginia Brights Cigarettes 1885 - 1891

Editor: This is an intriguing print, made sometime between 1885 and 1891 by Allen & Ginter for Virginia Brights Cigarettes. It's part of their "Actors and Actresses" series, and it’s a photograph, but more than that it is a commentary on that, using the mirror. The sepia tones give it such a dreamy, old-world feel. It feels inherently nostalgic. I find myself curious about the choices made in staging this scene, specifically how the actress is staged. What catches your eye when you look at this piece? Curator: You know, it’s funny you say that, because it takes me to a half-remembered dream – the kind that clings to the edges of consciousness, faded but vivid. Allen & Ginter understood something about desire, didn't they? This is blatant advertising. She is captured between reality and reflection. Between what she is, what she wants to be, and how it looks. What do you think, why is she looking at the mirror? What happens in those reflected moments? Editor: I imagine she's trying to exude a sense of allure. But also, given that this was mass-produced as advertisement, her own agency in this image seems compromised. Is she constructing herself, or is she being constructed by societal desires? Curator: Exactly! It's a play with layers of reality, expectations, and the very act of seeing and being seen. I mean it's brilliant because how many mirrors are in the construction of one's public and private persona! The photographer uses the space of a dressing room. What you have here is this tension between who the actress is and how she performs on the public stage. Now how can an ephemeral thing such as performance, allure, be caught within an object like tobacco? That’s alchemy! Editor: Wow, I hadn't considered how many conceptual layers that reflection added! Curator: Isn't that fascinating? It turns a simple promotional image into a layered narrative, thick with longing and reflections, literal and figurative. And those cigarettes become…well, a kind of portal to all those reflected desires. Editor: I guess seeing really *is* believing – and selling! Curator: Precisely!