Smoke, Slowly

One stick of incense, one lamp and an evening spent photographing something that never holds still.

Thin trail of incense smoke rising against a black background — Photograph by Abhishek Ajith

Smoke is the most patient subject I know and the least cooperative. It goes where the air in the room goes, and the air in the room goes where you breathe. So I stopped breathing, for a second at a time, and shot on the exhale.

The idea came from a studio session in Paris, where the incense on the windowsill was the only thing in the room that moved. I photographed it between takes and could not stop.

One lamp

A single lamp from the side, a black card behind and the shutter at a sixtieth. Slower and the smoke blurs into fog; faster and the lamp is not enough. The frame is the one curl that looked like handwriting.

Camera resting on a wooden table in warm window light — The other still life on the table that evening. Photograph by Markus Spiske.

Two hundred frames, four keepers, a room that smelled of sandalwood for a week. A field note, then, not a series: the lesson is that the slow shutter is a decision about time, and smoke makes the decision visible.

One lamp

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