Keep your social distance

I love photographing people when they are smoking: it's always an intimate moment, even though it seems directly opposite. We arrived in Venice on one of the last days of the carnival, there was of course an incredible amount of people, which made us very tired. My girlfriend's friend stopped almost in the middle of the square and smoked - and then everything around seemed to slow down, the hustle and bustle and chaos became external, it became a little easier to breathe. He didn't take off his mask, but he stopped being part of the carnival, stopped acting - and became more vulnerable. I lifted my camera and took the shot. He raised his arm, blocking himself - everybody laughed, thinking it was an affectation, posing. But for me, these shots are precisely about that: any external defence, even a mask, is useless when your inner acting is over.