For Over 30 Years, A Son Chronicled His Mother's Life, Death And Love Of Cigarettes

James Friedman was 9 years old when he began photographing his mother, Dorothy. She was 11 years old when she smoked her first cigarette. They both continued with their respective fixations until the day Dorothy died.  Friedman’s series “1,029,398 Cigarettes” chronicles his mother’s life over the course of 30 years and over a million cigarettes. The photos show the corrosive effects of chain-smoking in real time, spanning from before Dorothy was diagnosed with emphysema to her final days in the hospital. But more aptly, the images capture a son’s perspective of his imperfect but exceptional mother, a woman he described as caring, brilliant, talented and sophisticated. A woman who wrote poetry and read almost a book a night. “She could speak about almost any topic in great depth,” Friedman told The Huffington Post. “What I got most from her, I think, was her sense of intuition. Feeling comfortable embracing intuition in relation to creativity.” Friedman initially began photographing his mother to become closer to her. “There wasn’t a lot of affection in our family,” he recalled, “not a lot of connection. For me the camera was a way to form some kind of communication. Photography was a way for me to communicate; the world seemed to make more sense when I was looking at it through a camera. It still does.” At first, Dorothy was resistant to being photographed, and would often cove...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news