Emma’s ‘Like It, Love It, Live It’ Project

By Ali Clayton

1) Immediate Response: Nailed It!! Beautiful, Peaceful, Seems very classic, Emma has captured the era of the original photo in her image.

2) Objective Description: A black & white image. A close-up of a woman smoking. Two fingers, holding a lit, un-ashed cigarette is just visible in the bottom of the image. The woman is looking to her left as she blows a whispy cloud of smoke to the right. She is wearing a mesh cocktail hat tilted over her right eye. Her dark eye make-up and lipstick contrast with the white of her skin as well as the background.

3) Formal Complaints/Formal Praise: I don’t have any formal complaints with this picture. I think it was beautifully done. Emma stuck close to capturing the original image. Although Emma pointed out some technical things from her post-production work she would like to change, they were not things that I noticed. I think some people will probably find the motion in the fingers distracting but I don’t. I feel there’s a juxtaposition between the stillness in the face and the motion in the fingers. For me, this adds narrative to the photo and maybe adds a depth that isn’t present in the original photo. I feel that the attitude of the model is different from the original. In the original there seems to be a coldness that I take from the half closed eye but in Emma’s version, there seems to be more emotion coming from the model. I think this is a strength of the photo. In the fifties, women weren’t raised to be outwardly independent. The model in the original gets her strength from her attitude. Today, in my opinion, women are raised to be strong, independent people. Women aren’t supposed to show emotion. I see real emotion in Emma’s picture and that emotion is what gives the model her strength.

4) The Story It Tells: A lot of second hand smoke, trial & error, & Febreze. Emma would have liked to have shot this in the seamless but obviously couldn’t with current laws. She shot this in her home where she blacked out her windows with foam core and placed a white curtain in front. She lit her model with one industrial light. She put a lot of time and effort into the post-production work she did in Photoshop.

5) Work in the world & how it connects to other work: Lillian Bassman portrayed women in a strong, independent way and this image illustrates that. The model gives off the air of being a classy man-eater. This attitude originally drew Emma to this photo. She felt it was a strong and bad-ass portrait. The original image is from the 50’s and at the time of the original image, smoking was more of a status symbol. The risks of smoking weren’t evident yet and those who smoked could be considered in a more elite class. There was a coolness factor associated with smoking. Nowadays, the coolness factor has changed a bit but still exists. There is a bit of a rebellious attitude that goes along with smoking.