Lila's smokes

Artistic Description 

“Lila Smoke’s” is an intimate and ethereal black-and-white photographic portrait, where the softness of light and shadow fuses with sensual poetry. The image shows two faces—perhaps lovers—entwined in a delicate moment, their skin almost merging, blurred like smoke. The extreme close-up and soft grain render the scene abstract, turning the contours of a kiss into a poetic landscape.

Flowing along the silhouettes is a handwritten poem, trailing like breath or whispered thoughts. The words wrap around their profiles, emphasizing tenderness, desire, and memory. The title, "Lila Smoke's", evokes both a person (Lila) and a sensory metaphor: a kiss like smoke, fleeting, elusive, lingering in the air.

This piece is less about physicality and more about the trace—what remains after a touch, a word, a breath. The black-and-white aesthetic, the grainy texture, and the vaporous composition evoke timelessness, dream, and reverie.

Influences and Style

• Photographic and Visual Influences:

  • Inspired by Man Ray or Sarah Moon, where photography transcends realism to become an impression of intimacy and emotion.

  • The soft focus and interplay of light suggest pictorialist photography—artistic, atmospheric, and painterly in tone.

• Poetic and Artistic Influences:

  • Strong links to French romanticism and symbolist poetry. Think Paul Éluard or René Char, where the body is a landscape of mystery and affection.

  • The calligraphic text mimics the shape of the body, reminiscent of visual poetry or calligrams (à la Apollinaire), where form and meaning are inseparable.

• Artistic Themes:

  • Love and sensuality

  • The ephemeral nature of touch and memory

  • Smoke as a metaphor for fleeting presence

  • The unity and dissolution of identity in intimacy