Zig-Zag Cigarette Papers
Aram Alban Armenian
The crisp peaks and sloping planes of these cigarette papers assume a sculptural quality before the photographer’s lens. Magnifying them many times beyond their ordinary scale, Alban accords the disposable papers an illusory permanence, invoking the lasting power one might seek in a well-rolled cigarette. The peripatetic photographer, who operated successive studios in Alexandria, Brussels, Paris, and Cairo, closely followed the formal inventions of avant-garde photography, progressively introducing them to his own commercial practice. Here adapting a spare and geometric modernist idiom for advertising, he arranges his composition for the French firm Zig-Zag with a nod to the company name.
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