Quitting Smoking Might Be Easier

In the digital age, youthfulness is the ultimate social status symbol. Instagram and other platforms are teeming with flawless foreheads, sculpted jaws, and plump cheeks, all thanks to easy-to-use photo editing apps. The multi-billion dollar fast-growing cosmetics industry is flooding the market with all sorts of creams and serums that claim to slow the inevitable aging process. The list of ingredients in these products keeps getting longer and longer, and includes everything from caviar to avocado to snail slime. Fads like using a jawline trainer, doing face yoga, or getting a leech treatment quickly pass each other the baton. Großkopf‘s photo series Quitting Smoking Might Be Easier takes a humorous look at this trend. In a series of self-portraits, she poses with a cigarette in her mouth, an act that epitomizes the antithesis of anti-aging par excellence. The cigarette turns the quest for eternal youth into a pointless paradox and the race against time into a ridiculous farce.