Lipstick-Stained Photography

There is some thing utterly mesmerizing and feminine about this deceptively simple cigarette photo series. With nothing but discarded cigarette butts stained with different colored lipsticks, the series is mysteriously sexy as it forces your mind to wonder and imagine what the women smoking the cigarettes were like according to the color of the lipstick smudge left behind.

All about the little details, the 'Lipstick Stains' series is inspired by Irving Penn‘s cigarette series. Captured by photographer Joanna Ference -- who had to collect the butts from friends, strangers and off the streets of Philadelphia for the cigarettes photo series -- the candid images act like an indicator or representation of women. In the series lipstick stains become like fingerprints representing the women that smoke them.