Smoke

Smoke is an artist’s book of found photographs of people smoking, which Hans-Peter Feldmann made as a reply to the growing campaign against smoking in public places.

The subjects range from a coal miner to a group of nuns to Picasso. Feldmann, who had smoked for thirty years, chose pictures that show what he saw as the positive side of the habit. Walther König published the book in Cologne, in 2008 according to its listing at 303 Gallery.

Feldmann (1941–2023) was a German artist who worked by collecting, ordering and re-presenting existing images. His first series of books dates from 1968 to 1971, and his work of the early 1970s includes 70 snapshots of All the Clothes of a Woman.