A Lungful of Air
How substances shape the atmosphere of the city and the psyche of its inhabitants
A Lungful of Air follows the brief clouds produced when people smoke, inhale and exhale in public. Against concrete, glass and crowded streets, breath becomes visible. Each plume marks a pause while also altering the space around it.
The photographs move between cigarettes, cannabis and other forms of inhalation without treating them as equivalent in cause or consequence. What connects them visually is the gesture: a substance enters the body, the body releases it, and an internal state becomes public weather. The work stays with the tension between appetite and restraint, pleasure and dependency, solitude and performance.
Rather than moralizing about the people pictured, the series asks what these small rituals make visible. A drag interrupts the city’s pace. An exhalation briefly occupies shared air. What disappears almost immediately leaves behind a picture of how bodies negotiate pressure, desire and permission in public space.
