This series was a spontaneous one. You see, there’s this park not too far from my house, and one day I decided I wanted to walk over there. To get there, I have to cross a very high-trafficked street. Once I started getting close to the park, I noticed some strange things laying on the side of said street. A single glove, a very much abandoned “KEEP THIS COUPON” ticket, and discarded cigarette packaging. The closer I got to the park, the cigarette paraphernalia seemed to begin to repeat itself . Then I started noticing cigarette butts and packaging everywhere, and thus this series was born. I walked for about half a mile down the busy street and came across about a dozen or so packages and probably hundreds of little cigarette butts.
It was exciting to take a short walk on a mission (looking for butts & a variety of packaging) and sort-of refreshing to give notice to things someone else just wanted to get rid of. Eventually I just walked home, never visiting the park but having thirty or so new pictures and a new series on my mind. When I was prepping the images for upload, it made me angry to think about people littering and I wondered if I should glorify a bad habit by turning it into art. I did, and here it is:
I love this! I love the grit and detail, the cool color tone to the photos, and the fact that there were more “manly” cigarettes and then in the middle a pack of Virginia Slims to show that ladies are skanky, smoking litterbugs too. Love it!
great series Kandi. Seriously. Looks great and shows a slice of rarely thought about downside to irresponsible smoking…
I had a lot of fun with this project.
Thanks so much the both of you!
-kan
Love it!
My grandfather smoked Kool (green pack).
i really enjoyed these, too! love the gross detail of how each were dropped carelessly and collectively wearing away (although still very much there!).
Thanks dudes! Glad you liked them!