Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Woman smoking, man leaning

Woman smoking, man leaning

Voting period ends on 28 Sep 2024 at 15:51:40 (UTC)

**Original** – A satirical cartoon in which an unfeminine, smoking New Woman courts a shy, effeminate man. This challenge to gender roles was exploited by the Torches of Freedom ad campaign, in which smoking was framed as a liberating and equalizing act by women.

Reason: Satirical cartoon with a lot of character, depicting "women's emancipation" by way of smoking. Portrayed here as an inversion of gender roles, this challenge to social norms was framed as liberating by the Torches of Freedom marketing campaign, the article for which is a very entertaining read. The file appears to be 1-bit color, which is to say that every pixel appears either white or black (although it's not quite; I checked the levels). I consider this acceptable is because the source image is a black-and-white engraving, a process that can't produce grays, and therefore true to how it would have appeared on the page. This is also a static GIF, so it doesn't show the compression a JPEG of the same file size would. I tracked down the exact page of the book this came from - that took ages - and, while I don't think this specific scan is where this copy originated, it does confirm the image's provenance. Lastly, the picture is a bit under 1500px on the short axis, something I hope will be forgiven given its age.
Articles in which this image appears: Torches of Freedom, History of public relations, The Jewel of Seven Stars
FP category for this image: Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Culture, entertainment, and lifestyle/Culture and lifestyle
Creator: The signature on the source page is unreadable to me (and doesn't seem to match the name "A. Guillaume" at the bottom); the book itself is by C.E. Jensen. Image uploaded to Commons by Haabet.

Support as nominator – Moonreach (talk) 15:51, 18 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - this scan looks way over-filtered - I'm pretty sure the faces on the original printed page don't look as blobby as they do here. A woodcut or engraving should be scanned at a much higher res if it is intended to be just 1-bit. (BTW: Access to the page you tracked down is not allowed...) --Janke | Talk 17:08, 18 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Interestingly, "publication right" for this very image is also sold for 20€ on a stock image site... (In Denmark, copyright is life +70 years.) --Janke | Talk 17:18, 18 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I wouldn't read too much into the fact that it's for sale as a stock photo; that's not uncommon for material in the public domain. The fact that I was able to trace it to a document outside of copyright should be proof enough. I'm not sure why you can't see the page I linked, though; I got it to load just fine on multiple browsers, one of which (Safari) has no add-ons. The only thing I can think is that it's blocked in whatever area you are. I'm in the United States. Moonreach (talk) 17:27, 18 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I missed the bit about copyright being life +70 years. That may be a problem, since I genuinely cannot read the signature of the artist on the page this came from. Given that this is from 1905 at the latest, and that 70 years ago was 1954, I think it's likely the author (who could be reasonably assumed to be at least 20 in 1905) was dead by then, but not certain. I'm not going to withdraw this immediately, though; perhaps someone else will have an insight that gives us a definite answer one way or the other. Moonreach (talk) 17:32, 18 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That can be solved with a local upload; EN-Wiki only requires a work to be free in the United States. I've done it before for File:H J Lovink sketch, 1926.jpg, for example. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 21:15, 18 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]