"Ed Templeton’s 1999 photobook Teenage Smokers encapsulates the inherent contradictions in the burning desire to light up. While the health risks have never been so indisputable, there remains a deliberate, lingering rebellion in the act of smoking, precisely because there is something so nonsensical about it. A cigarette conveys a “don’t-care” attitude that favours living in the moment over planning for the future. For the adolescent smokers photographed by Templeton, it represents a heady embodiment of their seemingly invincible youth coupled with a flagrant wish to appear older than their tender years."
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