Card Number 238, Carrie Wallace, from the Actors and Actresses series (N145-2) issued by Duke Sons & Co. to promote Cross Cut Cigarettes 1880s

Curator: Oh, there’s something truly haunting about this one, a sepia-toned ghost from a lost era. Editor: Indeed. We're looking at Card Number 238, featuring Carrie Wallace, taken from the Actors and Actresses series put out by W. Duke, Sons & Co. as cigarette advertising sometime in the 1880s. It’s an albumen print, so it's essentially a photograph printed on paper coated with egg white. Curator: Albumen… it gives it a fragility, doesn't it? It looks like it might crumble to dust if you breathed too hard. The figure draped, obscured somehow… it's almost like a figure being unveiled, but also concealed at the same time. What do you make of that cloth, both revealing and hiding? Editor: The drape is quite clever. In classical iconography, veils often signify hidden truths, secrets, or stages of initiation. It could reference Wallace's profession, playing different roles, masking and unmasking. But here, it's used in conjunction with an advertisement—a different sort of theatrical unveiling of the 'best' cigarettes. Curator: Hmm, the layering of presentation upon presentation... I find it quite daring for a cigarette card. Do you think it really drew people in to the product? There is an element of tease involved and an awareness of sensuality here. Editor: Possibly, or perhaps it traded upon a well-known face, a familiar form from the theater. Either way, Wallace’s figure would have signified status, a touch of aspirational glamour packaged along with each purchase. In its day this card might have operated almost like a trading stamp, linking entertainment with consumption, and creating its own peculiar iconography. Curator: Which persists to this day, given that it is hanging in The Met. I find it so strange to see ephemera raised to such lofty status! Editor: Precisely. And, for me, the potency of its symbols deepens with each passing year, reminding us how images—and our responses to them—travel through time, changing their meanings, and gaining in historical heft. Curator: A fascinating little memento from a world both utterly lost and still, somehow, very much present.