Secondhand Smoke

Secondhand Smoke is a photographic body of work that considers censorship and its multi-layered effects on society. The pieces use the metaphor of rising smoke to represent literature that was banned, is being recommended for banning or has been burned because it honors individualism or challenges the status quo. In addition, the smoke evokes the individual characters within stories that come together, as well as oppose one another within their specific literary narratives; story and characters intertwine. Each piece is titled for a book that has been targeted by authoritarian leadership. The content of the books specifically informs the visual presentation of the smoke; the intersection of the relationship between plot, character and narrative.

Because there are now so many books that have been banned, I dedicated a section of Secondhand Smoke to act as an overarching acknowledgement to the shear volume of books—instead of focusing
on the individual titles. I’m titling these pieces F451 in paying homage to Ray Bradbury’s book Fahrenheit 451 which focused on censorship, book burning, banning, and referencing the temperature at which paper burns.

As part of this section referencing the quantity of books I am now constructing my Library sub-section which targets the states in the US who are now passing bills in congress to censor and ban books that they feel infringe upon conservative values (echoes of “German values” all over again). I have recently created the Library of Florida—which will need several iterations, the Library of North Dakota—where they are trying to pass a bill to remove not only books that may have sexual content, but art books by Da Vinci and Michaelangelo. These pieces are visual meditations that move from the subtle and sombre content to the brighter celebration of ideas.

During the recent years of political discord and unrest - exacerbated by social media and an ever expanding Global Pandemic—I was inspired to create a series that celebrates beauty while commenting on current conditions. A duality we all dance with now.

Incinerating intellectual, creative and critical thought has harmful reverberating effects on society, just as secondhand smoke does for all of us. It’s about maintaining control of individuals by censoring the ideas necessary to evolve: suppressing enlightenment and creative freedom. 

Throughout modern history, literature has been considered a danger to cultures that fear the consequences of free expression. Case in point: in 1937, the Nazi party banned and burned books included in an art show entitled the Degenerate Art Exhibition, which contained art, music, literature and film they deemed a threat to German values. 

This thinking continues in various ways today; Texas recently recommended banning over 850 titles. The books listed were primarily by women, people of color and LGBTQ writers, the Dallas Morning News reported. The list included books about racism like “Caste” by Isabel Wilkerson; about gender-queerness, like “Beyond The Gender Binary” by Alok Vaid-Menon; and about queer relationships, like “In The Dream House” by Carmen Maria Machado. 

The McMinn County School Board in Tennessee unanimously voted to remove Art Spiegelmean’s Maus from its curriculum. The Pulitzer Prize-winning book tells the story of author’s relationship with his father, a Holocaust survivor, by depicting Jews as mice and Nazis as cats. The school board reportedly objected to eight curse words and nude imagery of a woman, used in the depiction of the author's mother's suicide. The Matanuska-Susitna (Mat-Su) Borough School Board in Palmer, Alaska, serving over 15,000 students, banned such titles as I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison - all considered shocking for their “controversial content” and therefore removed.

Ultimately, smoke represents the aftermath; what remains of provocative of ideas. Secondhand Smoke is a cautionary tale of the growing threats facing artistic expression around the world.