Mondino, Three at Last

Jean-Baptiste Mondino, one of the greatest commercial photographers of our days and certainly the grand maitre of adertising and fashion photography in France, is publishing his fourth Schirmer/Mosel book, provocatively entitled Smoking Permitted. For centuries, smoking had been a cultural habit of elegance, coolness, and allure. Only recently it deteriorated to a kind of suicidal vice. Mondino's beautiful pictures of beautiful smokers challenge the political correctness in healthcare and physical education. One of the last documents of smoking in fashion, film, and advertising, Mondino reminds us of the stylishness of smoking before it was banned from screens, salons, and printed pages and relegated to a rough life on the streets.