Secondhand Smoke

Secondhand Smoke is a photographic series exploring censorship and its layered effects on society. Rising smoke serves as a metaphor for banned, challenged, and burned literature—books that honor individualism or challenge the status quo. The smoke also embodies the characters within these stories, reflecting their interactions and conflicts. Each piece is titled after a book targeted by authoritarian leadership, with its visual presentation inspired by the book’s themes, plot, and characters.

Given the vast number of banned books, I’ve dedicated a section of Secondhand Smoke to acknowledge this sheer volume rather than focusing on individual titles. Titled F451, it pays homage to Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury’s seminal novel on censorship and book burning. Fahrenheit 451is also referencing the temperature at which paper burns.

A subsection, The Library, highlights states passing laws to censor and ban books under the guise of protecting conservative values—echoing historical precedents of ideological suppression. For example, The Library of Florida and The Library of North Dakota respond to recent legislative efforts to remove books on race, gender, sexuality, and even art history, such as works by Da Vinci and Michelangelo. These visual meditations range from somber reflections to vibrant celebrations of free thought.

Amid political unrest, social media-fueled polarization, and the lingering effects of a global pandemic, I felt compelled to create a series that both critiques these conditions and celebrates beauty. The systematic erasure of intellectual, creative, and critical thought has profound consequences—just as secondhand smoke harms all who are exposed to it. Suppressing ideas stifles growth, enlightenment, and creative freedom. 

Throughout history, literature has been deemed dangerous by regimes fearing free expression. The Nazi Party’s 1937 Degenerate Art Exhibition banned and burned works they saw as threats to "German values." This mindset persists today. In Texas, over 850 books—primarily by women, people of color, and LGBTQ authors—have been recommended for banning. In Tennessee, Maus was removed from school curricula. 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. In Alaska, classics like I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and The Great Gatsby have been pulled from classrooms for their so-called "controversial content."

Smoke represents the aftermath—the remnants of bold ideas. Secondhand Smoke is a cautionary tale about the rising threats to artistic expression worldwide.