Artist Statement

        The idea behind my opposite photo came about when I was brainstorming different things that are considered opposites, happiness and sadness, love and hate, unhealthy and healthy, etc. I wanted to somehow link the two opposites to show that there are “exceptions to the rule.” With unhealthy vs healthy it was easy to do this because considering something unhealthy or healthy is subjective from person to person. Certain behaviors/feelings, foods, or actions could be defined as healthy by one person but unhealthy by another and things considered healthy can become unhealthy.

        My photograph uses cigarettes to represent unhealthy and vegetables to represent healthy. The vegetables being smoked symbolize somebody being obsessive over their weight or health to the point that it’s more dangerous than it is beneficial- how, like the cigarette is toxic/unhealthy physically, obsessive behaviors can be toxic/unhealthy mentally.

        To take this picture I had a bit of an obstacle because I wanted to have smoke coming out of the vegetable originally. It was evening time so I thought it would be visible in the air and we put a cigarette into a celery stalk to try it out. Unfortunately, I’m not very good at manipulating smoke and I ended up having to turn the lights on to take the picture outside because it became too dark. We decided to use the lighter instead because I’m familiar with shooting pictures with fire and it still got the point across, although, if I were to retake the picture I would want to try to use smoke again.