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

Curator: Here we have a peculiar little artifact, a trade card, made sometime between 1885 and 1891. It’s from a series called "From the Actors and Actresses series" produced by Allen & Ginter for Virginia Brights Cigarettes. Editor: It has an unusual charm. Immediately I notice this grainy sepia tone, and two fellows striking flamboyant poses. They're giving me major theatrical vibes, perhaps Shakespearean actors preparing backstage? There's a sense of almost playful affectation about the scene. Curator: Right! It's a photograph, printed on a small card. Back in the late 19th century, cigarette companies included these cards as collectibles, sometimes as a stiffener, you know. They depicted everything from actresses to baseball players to, well, historical scenes. It’s fascinating to see who and what was being consumed by the public eye back then, in such an everyday medium like this one. Editor: Yes, you nailed it. Looking at it, I find myself thinking about how ordinary this would've been back then, almost disposable, meant to be tossed or collected. What's amazing is that it still speaks to us of craftsmanship and design from its very texture. Consider the materials: paper stock, ink, even the glue that held it in the cigarette pack tells a tale about industry, about the burgeoning consumer culture… It reveals, inadvertently, how performance became intertwined with profit. Curator: And let’s consider those two "actors"! I think that they could almost be brothers; that sense of camaraderie or partnership seems right there at the surface of this image, although, obviously staged, to promote a consumerist industry Editor: True, but consider how even this staged performance intersects with a deeper, perhaps unintentional, documentation of labour: the photographers, the print workers, the cigarette rollers – all feeding into a cycle. We romanticize these “genre scenes”, and don't recognize how they came to be through so many people being part of its fabrication. Curator: Looking back at it, one can’t help but wonder if either man truly understood what that flimsy little card could someday mean… To whom they were speaking, or reaching to; what echoes it would leave behind… Editor: Agreed. In the end, all material carries echoes. This simple piece provides a rich field to ask who benefitted and who was impacted, the artists, the workers, and the culture; such things are still critical questions now.