"Always Camel" Cigarettes
Ralph Steiner
American, 1899–1986
1922
A palladium-print photograph that frames a colossal Camel cigarette billboard looming over a row of storefronts, showing how mass advertising imposes itself on ordinary street life.
Your eye is first grabbed by the enormous smiling man and oversized pack in the billboard, then pulled down to the crowded awnings, tiny shop signs, and hat‑clad pedestrians below, where the clash of scales feels at once comic and unsettling.
Made in 1922, Steiner’s image anticipates later photographic studies of consumer culture by making visible how advertising reshapes the city’s visual order and everyday experience.
Medium
Palladium print, printed 1974
Dimensions
3 5/8 × 4 11/16" (9.2 × 11.9 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of Willard Van Dyke
Accession
73.1975
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
