An unidentified girl in performance costume poses as a tightrope walker in this albumen cabinet card by Charles Eisenmann of 229 Bowery, New York, with the pencil notation "tightrope walker" on the reverse confirming her act. Eisenmann was the most prolific and celebrated cabinet card photographer of the Gilded Age, operating from his Bowery studio and producing portraits of circus and sideshow performers, human curiosities, and variety entertainers for sale to the middle-class public. Child performers were among his regular subjects, and this image represents the type of promotional portrait that performers commissioned for use as trade cards and personal mementos.

The girl stands in a three-quarter pose with her right arm raised and her left arm extended, striking a balance pose consistent with a wire or rope act. She wears a short theatrical costume with a fitted bodice, puffed sleeves with sash ribbons, a short skirt above the knee, white tights, and flat slippers. A ribbon ornament is pinned in her curled hair, and bracelets are visible at her wrists. A tufted velvet chaise lounge is partially visible at the left, and a potted plant at the right edge completes the studio setting.

The pink-bordered mount face bears the script imprint of Eisenmann, Instantaneous Portraits, 229 Bowery, N.Y. The reverse carries the elaborate orange-printed imprint of Chas. Eisenmann, The Popular Photographer, 229 Bowery, N.Y., with a vignette of a figure balancing on a globe, and the manuscript notation "tightrope walker" in pencil at the upper edge.