Won't Someone Please Photograph The Children ... Smoking!

Considering the prevailing global risk-phobic, kid-centric mindset, an artistic photographer looking for publicity could do worse than something like this, I suppose.

Being art, there's a deeper meaning, natch, as explained by ILoveBelgium.be.

Titled “The beauty of an ugly addiction”, photographer Frieke Janssens confronts viewers with questions about the general smoking ban introduced in Belgium some months ago. Surrealistic, melancholic and theatrical but especially controversial pictures of smoking kids are used to visualise the contradiction of the unhealthy cigarette and the immense attraction of smoking.

The children, aged four to nine, are shameless posing while enjoying their cigarette or cigarillo. So why kids? By portraying adults as children all the attention went to the smoking. An adult would draw to much attention to the portrayed person. Thus these portraits evoke question such as: is the smoking ban the right way to get rid of an absurd addiction and are smokers treated like little kids who can’t make the difference between good and bad?

Well, there is that, yes.

Just to prove that no kids were harmed in the making of these images (though a couple of Belgian anti-smokers suffered instantaneous heart attacks), here's the 'making of' vid.


The full set is here.