Nicotine by TR Ericsson

Through an alchemical process both intimate and unsettling, Ericsson breathes new life into personal family photographs, transforming them into ghostly imprints made with nicotine itself. Passing the substance through a halftone silkscreen, he allows the chemical to stain and shape the images—each print a spectral echo, as much about memory’s fragility as it is about the physical marks left behind by time.

At the heart of Nicotine is the presence—and absence—of Ericsson’s mother, Sue. A lifelong smoker, she would often sit at the dining table late into the night, cigarette in hand, lost in thought. Her suicide in 2003 left Ericsson with the painful task of clearing her home, where nicotine-stained walls bore silent witness to years of solitude and reflection. As he scraped the wallpaper, he found himself confronting more than just residue; he was unearthing the traces of a life, the imprints of grief, habit, and time.

Nicotine is his elegy, a meditation on the indelible marks left by the ones we lose. Through his process, he reimagines everyday snapshots—small, seemingly insignificant moments—and elevates them into something sacred. No longer mere remnants of the past, they become artifacts of longing, repositories of memory that refuse to disappear.

The book itself takes the form of a peculiar, almost ritualistic family album. Bound in a luxurious, tobacco-colored suede-like cloth, it carries the weight of history, evoking the drapery of interiors long since vanished. Inside, twenty-six photographs are carefully tipped onto the pages, recalling the delicate precision of a nineteenth-century scientific catalog or the intimate craft of a family scrapbook. Each print—etched into existence by the very chemical that contributed to his mother’s decline—is both a physical relic and a performative act, where the process of creation becomes an extension of mourning.

In Nicotine, time works in reverse. Rather than fading, the images emerge—rising like smoke, refusing to be forgotten. The book itself is a singular artifact of loss, each copy of the 500-edition release hand-numbered, signed, and marked by fire—its cover burned with a lit cigarette. Every copy is unique, each a quiet, final gesture, a fleeting presence made permanent.

This is not just a book. It is a memorial, a relic, an invocation of the past that lingers—long after the last page is turned.