My Loneliness Is Killing Me / I Smoke Alone

My Loneliness Is Killing Me / I Smoke Alone is a small photoset that uses the cigarette as a symbol of emancipation. Before 1929, when Edward Bernays launched the Torches of Freedom campaign, female dandies (or dandizettes) had already adopted the cigarette as part of their public, purposeful transgressions of cultural, moral, and gender boundaries.

This work reflects on how both subtle and overt propaganda enforce the power of the dominant culture by portraying queer, gender-nonconforming, socially nonconforming, or otherwise emancipated women as trapped, lonely, miserable, and perpetually lacking. (See: the spinster psychobiddy, the dead queer, the melancholic dandizette who chooses desire over love, belonging, and the precious safety of normalcy). These depictions function as cautionary tales for anyone who might contemplate denying convention or pursuing too much freedom.

Due to the ubiquity of this trope, My Loneliness Is Killing Me / I Smoke Alone might appear to be five portraits of someone who has constructed their selfhood outside the mainstream and now regrets it. Childless, husbandless, emotionally empty, disconnected. Smoking as they edge closer to the grave.

But they are not.

They are five images of someone smoking, content, waiting for a pizza to arrive.