Edward Augustine "Ed" Knouff, Pitcher, St. Louis Browns, from the Old Judge series (N172) for Old Judge Cigarettes 1888

Curator: Looking at this photograph, there’s an almost mournful stillness to it. The greyscale tones, the lone figure… it feels very contemplative. Editor: This is "Edward Augustine 'Ed' Knouff, Pitcher, St. Louis Browns," part of the "Old Judge" series of baseball cards, circa 1888. Produced by Goodwin & Company for their cigarette brand, these were essentially small albumen prints mounted on card stock. Think about the convergence here: sports, industry, and early photographic processes all rolled into one. Curator: I see how the convergence happened and the impact is tangible. But strictly speaking, my immediate draw is to the composition itself, even independent of the commercial element. The verticality is interesting – his upright pose juxtaposed against the horizontal plane of the bat... the symmetry… Editor: I'd argue the symmetry isn't quite there. The composition seems deliberate to display a commodity of mass consumption at the turn of the century. The photo reproduction technology used by Goodwin demonstrates how rapidly photography and photojournalism integrated into American marketing strategies. Curator: True, the presence of 'Old Judge Cigarettes' imprinted makes its commercial nature difficult to ignore, and knowing this was mass-produced changes how we interact with the materiality and understand its availability to the general population. It is so far away from something singular. Editor: Exactly! These cards democratized art, or at least, photographic representation, making it accessible to the masses along with their daily smoke. But it also turned the athletes themselves into commodities, traded and collected. Look at the layers of labor involved in a photograph of something, used to sell something else. Curator: Well, now, it truly alters my viewpoint when you frame it with a historical materialist lens. What once appeared static now brims with layers and production, changing the feel of this frozen moment and its context within its own time and ours. Editor: And what once appeared accessible and readily available becomes rich with social implications about marketing, labor, and sport at a transitional time in US History. Thank you.