Photo exhibit puts cigarette habit into sharp focus

child’s polka dot sock, an AR-15 rifle lying in weeds — which she reported — and, of course, uncountable cigarette butts.

Cindy Haines, executive director of Focus on Renewal, of which the art center and library are a part, visited the gallery a few days before the opening.

“This exhibit shows you the magnitude of a problem, but it also has a poetry of juxtaposition, like the colors of flowers” beside a pack of cigarettes. “And this,” she said, pointing to a plastic heart lying next to a pack of Newports, “... as if to say, ‘I love my neighborhood, but I do this.’”

Ms. Love placed the panels randomly, with a few exceptions, but as I studied them, they began creating a narrative, always with the Newport green as punctuation.

Newports that inspired incredible brand loyalty, so much so that their fans wouldn’t bum another brand, she said. More insidious than the chemical compounds has been a mass marketing of Newports over many years, in some cases giveaways to youth, in African-American communities, where litter is a symbol of a greater sense of disposability.

That dynamic is devastating to our society and part of the exhibit’s power.

Most puzzling is the incidence of discarded silverware, real spoons and forks. Why would they be there? Would people not hang on to these? Were people eating with utensils while walking? I’ve never seen anyone doing that, yet there are dozens of spoons and forks in the photos.

Ms. Love, an associate professor of media art and animation at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, acknowledges that these images could be in any low-income town or neighborhood, but she wanted to keep it authentic to her own place in the world, the place where she was born and raised.

When she smoked, Angela said, there was no substitute to satisfy the craving.

“If I got up at night and wanted cereal but had no cereal, I would have toast,” she said. “If I was out of cigarettes, I would get in the car.”

Taking photos of packs of Newports is “a new habit,” she said. “It serves a lot of purposes. I have gotten some of my students to quit. I’m embarrassed to have smoked.”

She also said she felt guilty about photographing instead of picking up the litter. But this presentation may be more valuable. (She said she does participate in neighborhood clean-ups.)

“I want this show to have an impact,” she said. “Would it make someone think twice about throwing things down, or would it make them change a habit?”

Even if you don’t litter, in that gallery you feel culpable for being a member of a discarding and disregarding species. Throwing stuff on the ground is our way of saying we have no cause to care about the places we inhabit. That is more distressing than the litter itself.