I love these cigarette-card ciclistas, staring down time with sturdy bare limbs and a jaunty contempt for the camera. How easily duped we are by the stiff poses of history, by a slow shutter leaving the subject far behind, inscrutable and out of reach. "Old-fashioned". These girls have made it to the twenty-first century intact, as fresh and insolent now as then. Look how alive they are in mind and body, altogether of the moment, brimming with health. Nothing will hold them back.
Arents Cigarette Cards (NYPL Digital Collections)
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