Toxic Beauty: “Smoke” Turns Cigarette Plumes Into Stunning Art
Sometimes the most dangerous things make the most beautiful art. Even fervent nonsmokers are likely to find Smoke interesting. It’s easier to photograph a racing car. To capture just 20 great shots, we took 100,000 photographs, literally burning through a total of 600 cigarettes.
We affixed each burning cigarette to a tripod against a black background. Then we shot close-ups as his brother held an ultra fast flash. The speed at which smoke rises posed are main difficulty. It only took a few milliseconds for us to see a shape that we wanted to capture, but by the time are brain commanded our thumb to shoot, the image was often gone. Also, since the smoke turned the studio air “gray,” he constantly had to stop shooting in order to ventilate. And then we had to wait until the air was totally “quiet”–which meant not moving–because that disturbed the smoke flow. The result are whirls and whorls that hint at ghostly faces, seashells, and shooting stars. What I like is an elegant figure–a pure picture of a simple turbulence.