The apparent translative nature of the photograph has persistently troubled theorists since photography’s beginning. This series of images, generated with the text-to-image model Midjourney, draws on the look and feel of historical cigarette cards. It captures the synthetic quality of photographic reproduction as its essential ontological feature. The series also troubles the relationship between natural and visual language, between the signifiant (the content or intended meaning of a sign) and the signifié (used to describe the vehicle of meaning). Midjourney often misses the connotation or ‘second meaning’ of the sign and produces a denotive image. These images were printed in the darkroom in an attempt to emulate ‘real’ cigarette cards.