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Monday, 6 March, 2000, 23:24 GMT
Picture of unhealthiness
Family - Mum smoking
Picture won National No Smoking Day competition
This haunting image of a young girl imitating her mother smoking a cigarette has won a competition staged for National No Smoking Day.

Photography student Alex Handley, 31, said the power of his image proved such a shock he quit the habit on the spot.


When I developed the picture it really shocked me. It made me realise the one thing I never wanted to see was either of my children smoking

Alex Handley
The photo shows his wife, Tracy, smoking a cigarette while helping son Matthew, 20 months, use an asthma inhaler.

Next to her on the family's sofa three-year-old Ella sucks on a pencil as if it is a cigarette.

Mr Handley, 31, from Leeds, said: "When I developed the picture it really shocked me. It made me realise the one thing I never wanted to see was either of my children smoking.

"I thought this made me a bit of a hypocrite as I still smoked, so I as good as gave up on the spot."


Victoria Rathbone's picture won second prize
The competition, run ahead of Wednesday's National No Smoking Day, asked photography students to submit entries illustrating one of a series of smoking themes, including changing attitudes to smoking and giving up.

Mr Handley said that although the photo was partly staged - Tracy does not smoke and he had been banished to the garden for cigarettes since Matthew was diagnosed with asthma - it made him think.

"It made me realise how easily children can imitate people around them. Nobody consciously chooses to start smoking, they do it because of a combination of peer pressure and what they get used to seeing around them," he said.

Second prize went to 18-year-old Victoria Rathbone, for a similarly haunting photo of a young girl smoking.
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