Tarek Fahmy: Cultural Critic

I chose smoking as my common activity.
The first set of photos are the one’s done outside, in a park with a stranger. I made sure that he was alone since I wanted to portray smoking as a non-social activity; partially it is.

The second set of photos are the controlled indoors type. I will snap this set tomorrow since I have a family gathering. In this set I want to obviously say that smoking is also a social activity.
Ironically, the social activity in these photos takes place indoors and the ‘alone’ activity takes place outside!

The following set of images are of a male smoker taken outside. I asked the permission of this gentleman smoker first before I proceeded to snap away with my digital camera. He was hesitant at first till I showed him my Pratt Institute I.D. card and a printout of the assignment instructions. The photos were taken from extreme closeups, far away, from the bottom and the top, to the left and the right. I know that I will make a video out of this so I wanted as much variety in the angles of the smoker as possible.

I chose a single smoking subject because smoking could be a singular non-social activity. To kill the time, sort of speaking, smoking fills the boredom with something to do. part of the reason why it’s so addictive.

The following set of photos will deal with smoking’s social aspect. This set is taken indoors with people that I am familiar with. Some people only smoke socially, maybe to lessen anxiety or maybe to relax a bit. Like the previous set, the shots were taken form a variety of angles, closeups, and far away shots.

Will post the images tomorrow!!!!