[I put this together to answer the request of whomever started
this thread]
" Gene Smith was perhaps the photographer who tried most
heroically to to make the magazine photostory meet the
standards of coherence, intensity, and personal
accountability that one expects of a work of art."
--- John Szarkowski
__________
Born in Wichita, Kansas, in 1918, at 14, he borrowed his
mother Nettie's camera to take pictures of airplanes at a nearby
airport. Mentored by newspaperman Frank Noel, Smith started selling photos
locally to newspapers while a teenager.
These were images of people during the Depression,
bearing the humanism that would characterize his life's work.
He studied photography at Notre Dame (who originated a special
scholarship just for him) for one year, and left
for NYC in 1937, finding work at Newsweek, then joining Black Star
and doing magazine work for LIFE, with a part-time contract when
he was nineteen years old.
At one point, dissatisfied with his work, saying that it
had "great depth of field and little depth of feeling", he
burned all his early photos.
In 1941, he went on assignment to WWII for Flying magazine,
and later for LIFE and other publications. His WWII in the
Pacific, and he landed --- with the Marines --- in places like
Saipan, Guam, and Iwo Jima. This was Smith's crucible. The
horrors of war, which have turned many a combat photographer
numb, or jaded, transmuted Smith's genius, and fueled his passion.
The photographs gained an intensity that has rarely, if ever, been
equaled, IMO. Gene Smith's compassion, talent and printing skills all came
together in a seamless blend of art, morality, and journalism.
The war photographs were so humane and non-propagandist, that
they were published by both the US and the Japanese during the war (!).
On May 22, 1945, in Okinawa, he was seriously wounded by shrapnel
in the face and hand. A piece of shrapnel went through his hand,
both cheeks, and took a few teeth with it. It took two arduous
years for him to recover, and having doubts as to whether he would
ever photograph again, he wanted to make his first exposure
meaningful. The result was "The Walk to Paradise Garden", an outstanding,
beautiful, metaphorical image of his two children walking out of a shaded
wood and into light. It is an image of hope for the future which Steichen
used as the closing image of the 'Family of Man' show.
Smith joined the Photo-League in 1949, and later served
as its president. He worked for LIFE magazine from 1947 to
1954, a period of prodigious output during which he turned out the
archetypal, most significant photo-essays of the age: "Spanish
Village", "Country Doctor", "Nurse Midwife", "Folk Singers", "Trial by
Jury", and "Man of Mercy". During this time he also wrote many articles
on photography for Ziff-Davis publications. An early proponent
of photographers having control over their images, he butted
heads often with LIFE's editors over lay-out, the sequencing
and number of images, pages, and more. This ongoing battle ended with
his leaving the magazine and joining Magnum in 1955, and he
did more photo-essays, including one of my favorites,
"As From My Window I Sometimes Glance", and entered into
what many believe to be his magnum opus, "Pittsburgh --- A
Labyrinthine Walk". It was supposed to be a brief assignment,
but Smith kept getting deeper and deeper, turning it into
a three year project, which bankrupted him, and strained
Magnum. In between, there were the three Guggenheims
(1956, 1957, 1968) and an NEA grant in 1971. He moved
with his wife Aileen to Minamata, an industrial city in Japan,
and did an essay on the effects mercury poisoning (through
unrestrained pollution) on its citizens. The Chisso Corp.
underestimated Smith and hired thugs who administered a terrible
beating. The work produced one of the landmark images of the
era: "Tomoko and Mother, Minamata, Japan, 1972", a heartbreaking
and hauntingly beautiful image of a mother and her deformed
child in the bath. An iconic Madonna and Child of the Dystopia.
His health was never the same after that...in 1976-78 he moved
to Tucson to teach at the U of Arizona, and organize his
archives at its Center for Creative Photography. On a walk
to the local 7-11 with his two cats, one of photography's
greatest epic poets, died.
It is hard to comprehend the level of commitment Smith
devoted to photography during his life. In book after book,
you will see the word "Heroic" used to describe his approach,
and in many ways it is an understatement. He was no superman,
bedeviled by many personal frailties and disappointments in life,
not the least of these being alcoholism, leaving behind broken
hearts, unpaid debts, legendary stories about how stubborn,
uncompromising and difficult he was to work with...
but he overcame these in his photography, creating
paeans to great humanists of his day, lyrical protests against
mans' inhumanity to man, and shimmering poetry about the
so-called common man. He untuitively knew the power of Myth,
and never let objectivity get in the way of the truth as he saw it.
Hope this helps,
--- Luis
Ps. I know someone will ask what kind of camera he used...and he used
Leica, Nikon, Minolta, Pentax and Olympus, often mixing
several simultaneously. Also an early master of using bounce-flash
in a very natural-looking way, and his printing skills...
A few quotes about him...
"It was Smith's pictures which showed me which way to go."
--- Bruce Davidson
"Only if you had seen Winogrand's 1960 exhibition at New York's
Image Gallery, for instance, you would have realized how heavily
influenced by Frank and Eugene Smith..."
--- Colin Westerbeck
" If passion makes a photographer, Smitty is the greatest."
---- Gjon Mili
"...he thought of his camera as an extension of his conscience,
and his images as reflections of his need to get to the heart
of the matter."
--- Naomi Rosenblum, Photo-Historian
_______________________________________________
A couple of URLs ---
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/S/smith/smith.html
http://www.singergallery.com/inventory/smith/page06.html
