For ten years, photographer Rocco Rorandelli travelled to India, China, Indonesia, the United States, Germany, Bulgaria, Nigeria, Slovenia, and Italy to document the tobacco industry’s impact on health, the economy, and the environment. Bitter Leaves gathers the resulting photographs and presents them alongside an afterword, captions, and infographics by scientist Dr Judith MacKay, collectively examining the complexity of this global industry and the influence of corporate mechanisms and power.

Rorandelli is the photographer. MacKay’s contributions supply argument, measurement, and context, allowing the photographs to sit beside evidence rather than replace it. This collaboration between image-making and scientific exposition is central to the book’s method: Rorandelli observes, MacKay clarifies, and together they examine a global trade whose costs are distributed far from its profits.

GOST Books published the collection in 2019 as a 144-page hardback, paper-covered with foil debossing. The book’s wide geography and decade-long span reflect its ambition to treat tobacco not as an isolated subject but as a system linking public health, agricultural labour, corporate strategy, and environmental change.

Bitter Leaves is documentary photography with a clear analytical dimension. Its combination of sustained fieldwork and MacKay’s scientific commentary makes it a considered examination of how a single commodity binds together producers, consumers, governments, and corporations across multiple countries.