Joe Camel's Last Stop

by Kris Rasmusson

Title

Joe Camel's Last Stop

Artist

Kris Rasmusson

Medium

Photograph - Photography

Description

Back in April of 1999 Congress passed the "Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement' which included the prohibition of cigarette ads on billboards. Knowing that the days were numbered for 'Kitsch Photographer Jim' to troll the roads to document the end of an era, I aimed my radar at finding the ultimate cigarette ad billboard for the purpose of showing the diabolical absurdity of the ads. It had to be a Joe Camel ad...

Then one day, when I was driving back home after having lunch in East Town, my radar directed me to a billboard on Wealthy Street. I immediately saw the fortuitous significance of it being next to street signs that read "Wealthy Ney". The word 'ney' is a slang word that means 'no'. I thought about how people got sucked into the addicting drug of nicotine with the delusion that smoking will make them hip and happy only to find, often when it's too late, that the habit had cost them dearly.

Wealthy? Ney!

I returned a couple days later and took the shot. The overcast sky was just what I wanted with its ominous texture and the absence of shadows.

Uploaded

December 2nd, 2011

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