The Cigarette Box Looks Like a Coffin

Until the shoot began that day, I was devastated by the fact that my girlfriend smoked. It’s not her fault at all. But it’s really hard to shake off the image—drilled into me since childhood—that cigarettes are harmful and a sign of sloppiness. Before I knew it, my heart was filled with resentment toward her.

Yuki Ito—a man whose sense of personal space I couldn’t quite figure out—arrived just as that sense of unease had reached its peak, and I felt as though his words and gestures had saved me. To me, his words and actions seemed to pay tribute not only to real people but also to the afterimages etched in my mind.That “camera”—which seemed highly unlikely to actually take photos—didn’t appear to be all that obsessed with capturing light anymore. (Photographed on May 27, 2026, at the semi-public editorial meeting “Play and Humanity”)