On a chilly day in February, students enrolled in Professor Edward Trayes’ photojournalism seminar took to the streets of Philadelphia to capture images that underlie a startling statistic: According to the Pennsylvania Department of Health, 25 percent of Philadelphia adults are smokers, well above the national average.  

“I wanted students to use the skills they learned in class to address a real issue,” said Trayes. “The smoking population in Philadelphia is huge, but who are these people and what led them to develop a smoking habit?”

The result of the project, which took a little under 30 days to complete, is a thought-provoking collection of 1,000 photographs and narratives that give viewers a first-hand glimpse into Philadelphia’s smoking community. 

Through a process called guerilla portrait making, students set up temporary studios on crowded sidewalks and in local parks, where they solicited smokers to be photographed and share stories about why they began smoking.

Although they sampled a diverse cross section, the students found a similarity between many of the smokers they interviewed, said photojournalism major Jessie Fox, one of the 28 student photographers involved in the project.

“It was interesting to find that, despite differences in age and nationality, many of them started smoking for the same reasons: stress, anxiety and peer pressure,” said Fox.

 

The “1,000 Philadelphia Smokers” exhibit, which includes mounted photographs, video and audio interviews, will be on display in Annenberg Hall atrium from April 29 through May 1. 

The exhibit also includes video images of the guerilla portrait-making process, a 389-page book, an 8-foot tube of cigarette butts collected from across the city and 1000phillysmokers.com, a web site featuring portraits and recorded narratives from the smokers involved in the project.