Without smoking, films lose some fire

THE PORTRAIT photographer Marion Ettlinger once told me that the worst thing to ever happen to her art form was the demise of smoking. A cigarette, after all, not only gives a subject something to do with his hands, it seems to provide an uncanny cure for camera shyness, allowing a facial expression and a physical posture to integrate into some ineffable moment of truth.

Meghan Daum

May 19, 2007