Here are some more photographs I took in the 1970s. These are of my friend Sue smoking roll-ups made with coloured cigarette papers I’d brought back from Paris. I’m aware you can buy coloured cigarette papers everywhere now, but in the 1970s they seemed to me very exotic – and I didn’t even smoke. I also loved the Art Nouveau packaging, which I think was some 1970s version of Alphonse Mucha’s designs for Job.

If my memory is not deceiving me, I think the shiny red lipstick was by Mary Quant (I forget what it was called, but I do know it wasn’t Bloody Mary), the claret was Mary Quant’s Aristo Claret (one of my all-time favourites), the dark purple was Biba’s Bordeaux, and the pink was an ephemeral brand I don’t remember the name of.

I think we did these in the studio at college – these being back in the days when you could smoke everywhere. Looking at them now, I like their messiness – smoke and lipstick and bits of tobacco all over the place – and I don’t mind at all that some are out of focus. I’m not sure I could find many friends nowadays who would be willing to smoke their lungs out for my benefit.

You can see another, much darker and arguably more interesting version of the first photograph in my recent post, Adventures in Colour Printing.

 

 

You might also be interested in:

CHINATOWN AND THE PERFECT RED

ADVENTURES IN COLOUR PRINTING

SCREEN ON THE HILL: PHOTOGRAPHS FROM 1980-81

TOM & RICHARD: PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE 1970s & 1980s