"The guard is down and the mask is off, even more than in lone bedrooms where there's a mirror. People's faces are in naked repose down in the subway." —Walker Evans
"So, have you ever smoked?" I laughed when James Benning asked me this question at the end of our conversation. "Honestly, I've probably smoked about twenty cigarettes," I told him. "I'm a child of the 70s and 80s. Nancy Reagan told me to say ‘no.'" That was almost the full extent of our discussion of smoking, despite the fact that Benning's feature-length video, Twenty Cigarettes, is constructed solely of portraits of smokers. The duration of each of the twenty shots is determined by the length of time it takes each subject to light, smoke, and discard a cigarette. Benning composed each shot, staged the person in front of a flat backdrop, and then walked away from the camera.
"So, have you ever smoked?" I laughed when James Benning asked me this question at the end of our conversation. "Honestly, I've probably smoked about twenty cigarettes," I told him. "I'm a child of the 70s and 80s. Nancy Reagan told me to say ‘no.'" That was almost the full extent of our discussion of smoking, despite the fact that Benning's feature-length video, Twenty Cigarettes, is constructed solely of portraits of smokers. The duration of each of the twenty shots is determined by the length of time it takes each subject to light, smoke, and discard a cigarette. Benning composed each shot, staged the person in front of a flat backdrop, and then walked away from the camera.
- 10/7/2011
- MUBI
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