The creation of the ten photographs which make up this portfolio began a few years ago with a preliminary image, Smoldering Matchbook.
Although it wasn't my intention, I started to receive a lot of feedback from people who saw Smoldering Matchbook, and picked out different characters revealed in the frozen smoke. This motivated me to revisit the concept and start shooting dozens of matchbooks. The methodical undertaking of igniting, extinguishing and capturing the resulting smoke with electronic flash was completed in one marathon session at my Montclair studio.
I think to fully appreciate this series, it's important to understand that the resulting images have no basis in Photoshop. They are the product of a lot of matchbooks, and careful editing to find the apparitions that were created in the smoke. - George Diebold