Frederick Lander "Dupee" Shaw, Pitcher, Newark Little Giants, from the Old Judge series (N172) for Old Judge Cigarettes 1888

Editor: Here we have "Frederick Lander 'Dupee' Shaw, Pitcher, Newark Little Giants" from 1888. It’s a baseball card, seemingly a photograph. What strikes me is how this image was circulated; its relationship with advertising, I suppose. How should we interpret this piece? Curator: We must consider the mass production of these cards alongside cigarettes. The 'Old Judge' series, commercially printed, reveals much about late 19th-century consumer culture. Who was producing them? What labor practices were involved in cigarette and card production at this time? These seemingly innocent cards reflect industrial capitalism and its distribution networks. Editor: So, beyond just appreciating it as a portrait of an athlete, we should be looking at the factory involved? The workers, the raw materials used for printing and photography... even the tobacco? Curator: Precisely. The card acts as evidence of complex systems. How does mass production cheapen the art form while simultaneously broadening access? Were these baseball cards considered 'art' at the time, or merely ephemera? What do we consider valuable enough to archive? What impact did photography, now reproducible, have on manual methods of portraiture? Editor: That’s a lot to think about from just one card! I suppose understanding the social and industrial context makes this a valuable historical artifact. Curator: Indeed. Considering the full scope of the processes and implications gives even the smallest artwork unexpected depth. We go beyond aesthetics and tap into the very means by which meaning is manufactured.