A woman casually smokes a cigarette at the Limelight Café in New York, circa 1954. In many cases, like this one, the fact that the subject is smoking contributes positively to the image. The master of photography Weegee He took advantage of the situation to capture a seductive image, inviting one to imagine a story and the rest of the scene, which remains outside the image.
The dangerous aesthetics of cigarette smoke
The eroticism of smoking in black and white photography in the last century
09/02/2026
BarcelonaA spiral taking flight, as part of an artistic creation. Smoke—and smoking—is integral to the aesthetics of photography. Throughout the 20th century, smoking was used as a creative and narrative element to create more compelling, transgressive, and modern images. Smoke and the smoker serve to reveal more complex or ambiguous individuals. Smoke expresses the fleeting nature of the moment. Through smoke, photography becomes a snapshot, rising like an invisible thread in popular culture. Despite its known dangers, the ritual endures, laden with symbolism. We journey through images, exploring the history that links smoke to photography, connecting this habit with black and white images that evoke another era and a bygone aesthetic.
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A seductive image
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Rural life
Photographer John Vachon traveled to the Ozark Mountains of Missouri in 1940. He was assigned to photograph farmers for the Farm Security Administration, an influential photography program documenting the challenges of rural poverty and farming life. This image of a farm woman smoking on her porch was one of the first photographs John took.
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Cars and cigarettes
A young couple lights a cigarette in a convertible, in a 1930 photograph. Today we know and understand the duality of this image, which, on a more practical level, we know is harmful. We are prisoners of our own ambivalence about beauty and morality.
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Smoke rings
A man smoking a pipe exhales smoke rings in a picture posted on Daily Mirror in 1960.
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A solitary cigarette
A man smokes on a deserted street in London, England, in 1965.
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The sun sets
Actors Karl-Arne Holmsten and Irene Söderblom during a break in filming the movie Hotell Kåkbrinken, in Sweden, in 1946.
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Everyone was smoking
"Monday, May 9, 1910. Newspaper vendors at Skeeter's Branch. Jefferson near Franklin. They were all smoking."In 1908 Lewis Hine took this photograph while working as chief research fellow of the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC), a private organization founded in 1904 in the USA to promote legislation to protect children from exploitation by American industry.
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A 'pete' during the intermission
A woman smokes during the intermission of a play in Berlin.
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The eroticism of smoke
Woman smoking a cigarette in a plastic image from the 1930s.
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Lifetime
Kathleen Behan smoking in London in August 1959.
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Passive smoker
One man smokes and the other doesn't, on September 16, 1987 in a bar.