W. Eugene Smith
What I like about Eugene Smith is that, despite his awkwardness, he was truly focused on the personal implications of Life in the city, war and environmental issues such as the mercury poisoning in Minamata Bay, Japan. His projects often overran by months and even years (notably his Pittsburgh project where a commission of three weeks and a hundred photographs led to three years and twenty one thousand photos). He needed the extra time to get to grips with the story that he witnessed and wanted to tell. He had a vision he wanted to convey and that often took time well beyond what others expected of him. His projects thus were truly genuine and resonated in a very meaningful way with those that saw his photos.
If Eugene Smith felt that his photos would help to right a wrong perpetuated by a company or by the state then he was prepared to take risks to his well being in order to tell the story. He firmly believed that the photographer should have some purpose and reason for taking photographs. He cared very deeply about the subjects of his photos and wanted to shine a light on social injustices. He didn’t think taking a photo was justified unless there was some purpose to it. Also he thought that the taking of a photograph was secondary to being involved or engaging with what he saw. He wouldn’t intrude on someone’s grief if it were not welcome and he would prefer to get involved if that was the right thing to do rather than take a photograph.
When asked by Phillipe Halsmann what justified his intrusion into other people’s personal affairs his reply was ethically sound.
“I don’t think a picture for the sake of a picture is justified — only when you consider the purpose. For example, I photographed a woman giving birth, for a story on a midwife. There are at least two gaps of great pictures in my pictures. One is D-Day in the Philippines, of a woman who is struggling giving birth in a village that has just been destroyed by our shelling, and this woman giving birth against this building — my only thought at that time was to help her. If there had been someone else at least as competent to help as I was then, I would have photographed. But as I stood as an altering circumstance — no damn picture is worth it!”
From an interview with Phillipe Halsmann in 1956
Eugene Smith wanted to tell a story as best he could and was not worried about getting involved and even staging a photo if it would help.
So in the same interview he is asked about the circumstances of one of his most memorable photos that of a Spanish woman throwing water into the street:
“Q.
I remember your picture of a Spanish woman throwing water into the street. Was this staged?
A.
I would not have hesitated to ask her to throw the water. (I don’t object to staging if and only if I feel that it is an intensification of something that is absolutely authentic to the place.)
Q.
Cartier-Bresson never asks for this…. Why do you break this basic rule of candid photography?
A.
I didn’t write the rules — why should I follow them? Since I put a great deal of time and research to know what I am about? I ask and arrange if I feel it is legitimate. The honesty lies in my — the photographer’s — ability to understand.”
Other photographers like William Klein (Gun, Broadway, New York 1955) and Diane Arbus (Child with a toy hand grenade in Central Park,1962) have not been concerned about whether a photograph has been staged or not. Even Dorothea Lange’s famous ‘Migrant Mother’ photograph was staged to some extent. Which children were in the photograph and where they were looking were important aspects of the photograph that became famous.
Eugene Smith was equally forthright about how important it is to develop the photograph and be in control over its printing.
He would spend endless hours in the darkroom meticulously adjusting the light and shadows on his darkly toned prints:
‘Q.
Why do you print your own pictures?
A.
The same reason a great writer doesn’t turn his draft over to a secretary… I will retouch.
Q.
Avedon said that there are three steps in making a photograph: first the taking of the pictures, then the darkroom work, then the retouching. He showed me one unretouched picture in which the girl’s skirt fell straight; in the final version it was flying out.
A.
I would have gotten her skirt up somehow.’
Eugene Smith made incredible picture stories such as ‘The Country Doctor’ which was a product of spending 23 days following a doctor in Colarado documenting his life and leisure. His photo stories that appeared in Life magazine were very well sequenced and edited which added to the story he portrayed. It is this aspect of visual story telling that makes a project and sequence of photographs so much more than the sum of the photos taken. An individual photograph can be revealing in its composition, its mood, its candidness but when shown with other photos in a project takes on additional meaning. Eugene Smith was a true master of the photo project. Within that project, nevertheless, he wanted every photograph to make an emotional impact:
‘…each time I pressed the shutter release it was a shouted condemnation hurled with the hope that the picture might survive through the years, with the hope that they might echo through the minds of men in the future – causing them caution and remembrance and realization.”