Alice Carle, from the Actors and Actresses series (N145-8) issued by Duke Sons & Co. to promote Duke Cigarettes 1890 - 1895

Editor: This is "Alice Carle, from the Actors and Actresses series," printed sometime between 1890 and 1895 by Duke Sons & Co. as an advertisement for Duke Cigarettes. It's currently housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. What immediately strikes me is the somewhat faded quality of the print; it evokes a sense of bygone glamour. How do you interpret the portrait? Curator: This small card, born from commercial intent, paradoxically reveals grand cultural aspirations. Consider how the ‘actress’ becomes an archetype here, elevated through pose and presentation. What cultural memory does she invoke? Think about classical ideals – the draped fabric, the slightly averted gaze - how these elements, repeated and reimagined through various media, create lasting associations of beauty and status. Editor: So, even within this commercial context, the image appropriates and reinforces established ideals of feminine beauty and social standing. Does the fact that this was distributed as a cigarette card alter the message? Curator: Intriguingly, it amplifies it. The cigarette card placed "high" culture, quite literally, in the hands of the masses. What's fascinating is that it also made the figure accessible – collecting these cards allowed people to create their own pantheons, so to speak. The mass production of images also contributed to the burgeoning celebrity culture of the late 19th century. Does seeing it that way shift your initial sense of 'bygone glamour'? Editor: It does. It complicates it. It’s no longer just about this woman and an older time but about the beginning of modern obsessions with celebrity, advertising and image culture. Curator: Precisely. And the afterlife of those images. The subtle, sustained power of symbols over time is, I believe, still palpable here. Editor: I'll definitely look at similar images differently from now on. It's incredible to consider these cards as tiny, early building blocks of today’s media landscape.