Humo [smoke]

Smoke [humo] is a collaboration with photo historian Horacio Fernández. We wanted to make a photo-book in which the text is integral and inseparable to the pictures. The photographs were made in a disused cigarette factory. The texts are from the Stanford Universities’ archive of cigarette advertising and Horacio’s responses to both the images and advertising “slogans” not only subvert the intention of the publicity but add new depth and meaning to the work. The book was published in a non-commercial edition of 40 copies and its format is that of a novel (based on Tschichold’s teachings) with a rigorous “golden section” grid behind it, it prints 32 pages per plate, 3 plates 96 pages, softcover with a dust-jacket and was nominated for the Prix Bob Calle du livre d’artist 2021 and is exhibited at the Bibliothèque des Beaux-Arts the same year.

“One day we felt we owed a debt to smoke. It had surrounded us for so long that we missed it. Humo/Smoke is our way of settling the score. The images show the decline of an industry through the ruins of a tobacco factory. The words have been chosen from among the endless literature on smoke, especially the advertising slogans of the business, which promised pleasures as numerous as the drawbacks they kept silent. Humo/Smoke is a written photobook because we think images are too poetic when there is nothing to read, and words too ambiguous when there is nothing to see. It is also a rather melancholy photobook, and consequently a little rebellious, as light and whimsical as smoke itself, which never lets itself be tied down. We dedicate it both to those who like spending the hours watching it sway back and forth, and to those who believe it casts the an evil shadow.”

The trade edition of 500 copies has been published by Turner Libros and is available here.