Miss Cameron, from the Actors and Actresses series (N145-7) issued by Duke Sons & Co. to promote Duke Cigarettes 1880s

Editor: This is a small portrait card of Miss Cameron, made by W. Duke, Sons & Co. in the 1880s, as part of a series to promote Duke Cigarettes. The drawing is also a photograph, interestingly enough. It has a sepia tone and the card format makes me think about consumer culture, even back then. What's your take? Curator: It’s fascinating how this image conflates "high" culture – the actress, portraiture – with the burgeoning mass market via the cigarette card. I focus on how the production of the card and the object itself participates in a wider system of labor, materials, and consumption. Consider the paper: its mass production relied on specific industrial processes and global trade networks. The ink, too. These weren't created in a vacuum. Editor: That's a different way of looking at it! I was caught up in the image itself. The material construction completely escaped me. It never even occurred to me that the materiality of a cigarette card is worth considering in art! Curator: The choice of printing method – a relatively new photographic process, which made reproduction easier – also suggests a drive to maximize profit, while the drawing/photography itself references popular portraiture, appealing to aspirations of wealth. How does that impact the availability and experience of “art”? Who has access? Who decides what art even *is*? Editor: So, the "artwork" here really becomes more about its function in a larger system of production and consumption, blurring the lines between art and advertising? That makes sense. The layers upon layers of capitalistic functions makes my head spin! Curator: Precisely. It pushes us to think critically about the seemingly simple objects we encounter daily. And it forces one to re-think the relationship between art, craft, labor, and capitalism. Editor: I see. Examining its production process helps decode a whole network of meaning behind something that seemed, initially, just like a pretty picture. Curator: Indeed, we must not overlook that labor is as central to a painting as it is to this cigarette card. Every image comes to being through work.