I once knew a guy who took up smoking for artistic expression. He did it for his career. He said he was a photographer in Serbia and that his excessive smoking always leaked into his snapshots of life, be it violence, romance, death, comedy or tragedy. It adds a missing element, he’d tell me. Plus, nobody else knew what Serbia looked like so always having smoke in the shot made it look that much more enigmatic.
National Geographic photographers used to carry around something red to make their images pop, but I use my cigarettes, he’d say. He was right, I guess. He only shot in black and white on this beautiful old Leica R3 Safari – he wouldn’t shoot with anything else – and the faint hint of smoke always added a special something to his photos. You could almost smell the sweet tobacco just by looking at his photographs.
He died last year from lung cancer. There was only one photograph presented at the funeral. It wasn’t the little Serbian children playing on the cobblestone streets, the street brawls he’d captured on film or even that young boy who bent over to kiss the hand of the young girl that one Sunday morning. It was a horribly-composed color photograph of my friend standing against a brick wall, smoking. This was his farewell.
The mourners, dressed in black and white, gazed monotonously at this photo until the pastor was done speaking, at which point they got up and walked passed his body one by one, pitying him.
He died for his art, they’d say.
I wouldn’t done anything different, he’d reply from beyond the grave.
