AT A GLANCE
- Known for
- Long photo essays for Life magazine, such as Country Doctor (1948), and his last big project, Minamata
- Worked in
- Black and white
- Camera
- 35mm cameras; in 1937 Newsweek fired him for refusing to use medium-format cameras
- Also
- Member of Magnum Photos (associate in 1955, full member in 1957); the W. Eugene Smith Fund, founded in 1980, gives grants in his name
- Start with
- W. Eugene Smith: Photographs 1934–1975 (Abrams, 1998)
- Links
W. Eugene Smith (1918–1978) was an American photojournalist. His long photo essays for Life magazine, like Country Doctor (1948), set a new standard for the photo essay. His last big project showed the world the victims of mercury poisoning in Minamata, Japan.
The story
In 1946, in the woods behind his house in New York state, W. Eugene Smith followed his two small children, Patrick and Juanita, with a camera. For about a year, after many operations, he had not been able to hold a camera properly. This was his first real attempt to work again. The children walked away from him along a path, toward the light, and he made the picture.
The year before, he had been in the Pacific, covering the war for Life. In 1945, during the battle of Okinawa, Japanese mortar fire wounded him badly. Born in Wichita, Kansas, in 1918, he took his first pictures for two local newspapers at 15.
Once he could work again, he went back to Life. In 1948 the magazine sent him to Kremmling, Colorado, to follow Dr. Ernest Ceriani, the only doctor for about 2,000 people. For four weeks Smith tried to fade “into the wallpaper.” The doctor remembered it well: “He would always be present. He would always be in the shadows.”
Country Doctor became a landmark of photojournalism. But Smith was unhappy with the way Life laid out his pictures. In 1955 he left the magazine and joined Magnum Photos. From 1957 he also photographed and recorded jazz musicians in a New York loft.
His last big story took him to Japan. In 1971 he and his then wife, Aileen M. Smith, moved to Minamata, where a Chisso factory had poisoned the sea with mercury. They planned to stay three months and stayed about three years. In January 1972 Chisso workers attacked him and other reporters, and he was badly hurt. Their book Minamata came out in 1975. Three years later he died in Tucson, Arizona.
Of all his photographs, the walk in the woods became the most loved. In 1955 Edward Steichen chose it as the final picture of The Family of Man at the Museum of Modern Art. Smith wrote about that day: “And as I followed my children through the underbrush and the tall trees – what joy of discovery everywhere was theirs – and as I watched I knew again that in spite of all of it, and in spite of every war, and of every setback, that today, now, I wished to speak out a sonnet for life and of the worth of continuing, and in living it.”
The work
- 1918Born on 30 December in Wichita, Kansas
- 1937Moves to New York and studies at the New York Institute of Photography
- 1945Badly wounded at Okinawa while covering the war for Life
- 1946Makes The Walk to Paradise Garden, his first picture after his wounds
- 1948Country Doctor is published in Life
- 1955Leaves Life and joins Magnum Photos
- 1957Begins photographing and recording in the jazz loft at 821 Sixth Avenue
- 1971Moves to Minamata, Japan, with Aileen M. Smith
- 1978Dies on 15 October in Tucson, Arizona
Lessons
Learn first, shoot later. In Kremmling he made very few pictures at first. He wanted to understand the doctor, his work and his surroundings.
Plan the opener and the closer. He kept the first and the last picture of a story in mind, and at night he sketched the pictures he already had to see what was missing.
Stay long enough to disappear. The doctor said Smith was always there, in the shadows, until people stopped noticing him.
Try this: follow one person at work for a week. Take very few pictures in the first days. Each evening, make a small sketch of the pictures you have, decide on an opener and a closer, and list the pictures still missing.
Gear
35mm film camera: he preferred small cameras from the start. In 1937 Newsweek fired him because he refused to use medium-format cameras. His camera at that time was a 35mm Contax.
Tape recorder: in the jazz loft he recorded about 4,000 hours of sound next to his photographs.
After he was hurt in the 1972 attack, he sometimes worked in Minamata with a cable release held in his mouth.
Books
W. Eugene Smith: Photographs 1934–1975 (Abrams, 1998). Edited by Gilles Mora and John T. Hill, with essays by Gilles Mora, Serge Tisseron, Alan Trachtenberg, Gabriel Bauret and John T. Hill. It has 352 pages and 351 duotone photographs, drawn from the Smith archive at the Center for Creative Photography. It covers his whole career: the war in the Pacific, the Life essays Country Doctor, Nurse Midwife and Spanish Village, Pittsburgh, the jazz loft and Minamata. A chronology and a bibliography close the book. The best single book if you want to see everything.
Minamata (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975). Words and photographs by W. Eugene Smith and Aileen M. Smith, about 190 pages. It tells the story of the mercury poisoning in Minamata and of the people who lived with it, from the patients and their families to the protests and the court case. The Smiths planned to stay three months and stayed about three years, and the book shows how close they came to the people. For readers interested in photography that tries to change something.
The Jazz Loft Project (Knopf, 2009). Full title: The Jazz Loft Project: Photographs and Tapes of W. Eugene Smith from 821 Sixth Avenue, 1957–1965. Sam Stephenson selected and edited the material and wrote the text. In 288 pages it shows musicians such as Thelonious Monk and Zoot Sims rehearsing in the loft, the street seen from Smith’s window, and the people who passed through. A different, more private side of Smith, and a good book for jazz lovers.
Let Truth Be the Prejudice: W. Eugene Smith, His Life and Photographs (Aperture, 1985). A large book with a biographical essay by Ben Maddow and an afterword by John G. Morris, and more than 170 duotone plates. It was published with the first major retrospective of his work, organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which then toured ten cities in the United States and Canada. It joins his life story with his pictures, so it suits readers who want to know the man as well as the work.
In his words
“I bear in mind that I have to have an opener and closer. Then I make a mental picture of how to fill in between these two.”
“When a good picture comes along, I shoot it. Later I may find a better variation of the same shot, so I shoot all over again.”
“On any long story, you have to be compatible with your subject, as I was with him.”
Today, I am going to talk about a photo essay Country Doctor by W. Eugene Smith. I am going to take a closer look at the story behind some photographs and if you are not familiar with W. Eugene Smith