Big Picture: Smoking Kids, by Frieke Janssens

A disturbing YouTube video of a tubby Indonesian toddler with a 40-a-day habit – unsurprisingly, he was taken in hand by child protection services after it appeared – inspired Flemish photographer Frieke Janssens to pose young children with cigarettes. Photograph: Frieke Janssens

Styled in nostalgic vintage clothes that nod to an undetermined old-fashioned era, the kids look oddly convincing mimicking smokers’ casual stances as they blow smoke from their noses and flick out their wrists Photograph: Frieke Janssens

For the actual shoot, sticks of chalk and cheese stood in for fags, which were added in post-production. Photograph: Frieke Janssens

Janssens found willing participants through her commercial work, friends of friends and casting agencies. Photograph: Frieke Janssens

Struck by how disturbed she had felt after watching the YouTube video, Janssens had wanted to explore what might happen if she, too, removed smoking from its adult context. Photograph: Frieke Janssens

Smoking has long lost its power to shock, she believes; this gave some of that power back. Photograph: Frieke Janssens

Fortuitously, her work coincided with the strengthening of Belgium’s ban on smoking in public places, lending the project an extra dimension. Photograph: Frieke Janssens

“At the time, people were against the ban because they thought it treated smokers like children,” she says. “But now we’re used to it, people believe it’s a good thing.” Photograph: Frieke Janssens

The ban has added to the sense of smoking as a bygone activity. “Now the days when we could smoke in public places, offices or planes seem to belong to another, more glamorous era: the jazz age, Mad Men.” Photograph: Frieke Janssens

Janssens insists she didn’t set out to get a particular reaction, good or bad. “I just wanted to present the contradiction [between children and smoking] and stimulate thought.” Photograph: Frieke Janssens

If she had really wanted to shock, she might perhaps have snapped the children in their school uniforms. Instead, with them dressed as retro adults, it’s easier to say it’s all make-believe. Photograph: Frieke Janssens