'Smoke Without Fire', Photographs by Jonathan Oppong-Wiafe

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Launch night 9th March — National No Smoking Day Times: 6 — 9 pm (and then open to the public until midnight) The Muse at 269, 269 Portobello Road, London W11 1LR Exhibition runs: 8th to 13th March 2011 How do we perceive smoking? Wanting to explore people's perceptions on smoke, Jonathan Oppong-Wiafe has created a series of photographic portraits of individuals depicting them exhaling smoke. He was curious to investigate how it can add to our perceptions of beauty or ugliness and what is it that that we find so alluring or repulsive about smoke? Using the interaction between subject and smoke in black and white, Jonathan draws inspiration from his personal relationship with smoke and how he is perceived smoking. We all know that it's bad but still continue to do it. Last summer he took a photograph of himself smoking and it prompted him to experiment more with this subject, hence the exhibition. Arguably sinister or beautiful, each of Jonathan's images portrays a different expression. He questions whether it's sexy, smoke falling from the mouth of a girl in a slight pout or does it bring to life the sad reality of an aged, furrowed brow of an older man. People smoke in different ways and have different perceptions about themselves when smoking. The project is about exploring peoples attitudes towards other people smoking as well as them smoking, themselves. A west-London local, Jonathan invited a wide demographic of characters from his local area to sit for him, all willing to take part in the exploration into the aesthetic of the effects of smoke interacting with people. Jonathan's background lies in photographic portraiture, heavily influenced by the likes of Richard Avedon and Henri Cartier-Bresson. ‘Can smoke make the ugly beautiful or the beautiful ugly….?' — Jonathan Oppong-Wiafe.