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W. Eugene Smith
(From Wikipedia, the
free encyclopedia)
William Eugene Smith
(1918-1978) was an American photojournalist known for his refusal to
compromise professional standards and his brutally vivid World War II
photographs.
Born in Wichita, Kansas, Smith graduated from Wichita North High School in
1936. He began his career by taking pictures for two local newspapers, the
Eagle and the Beacon. He went to New York City and began work for Newsweek
and became known for his incessant perfectionism and thorny personality.
Smith was fired from Newsweek for refusing to use medium format cameras
and joined Life Magazine in 1939. He soon resigned from Life and was
wounded in 1942 while simulating battle conditions for Parade magazine.
As a correspondent for Ziff-Davis Publishing and then Life again, Smith
entered World War II on the front lines of the island-hopping American
offensive against Japan, photographing U.S. Marines and Japanese prisoners
of war at Saipan, Guam, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. On Okinawa, Smith was hit
by mortar fire. After recovering, Smith continued at Life and perfected
the photo essay from 1947 to 1954. In 1950, he was sent to the UK to cover
the General Election, in which Labour, under Clement Attlee, was narrowly
victorious. Life had actually taken an editorial stance against the Labour
government, but Smith's essay was very sympathetic to Attlee. In the end,
a limited number of Smith's photographs of working-class Britain were
published, including three shots of the South Wales valleys. In a
documentary made by BBC Wales, Professor Dai Smith traced a miner who
described how he and two colleagues had met Smith on their way home from
work at the pit and had been instructed on how to pose for one of the
photos published in Life.
Smith severed his ties with Life again over the way in which the magazine
used his photos of Albert Schweitzer. Upon leaving Life, Smith joined the
Magnum photo agency in 1955. There he started his project to document
Pittsburgh. This project consisted of a series of book-length photo essays
in which he strove for complete control of his subject matter.
Complications from his consumption of drugs and alcohol led to a massive
stroke, from which Smith died in 1978.
Today, Smith's legacy lives on through the W. Eugene Smith Fund to promote
"humanistic photography," which has since 1980 awarded photographers for
exceptional accomplishments in the field.
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The Walk to Paradise Garden, 1946
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Tomoko Uemura in Her Bath
Minamata, 1972
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Nurse Midwife Delivering
Baby
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Tribute to Kafka - Juanita
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Burial at Sea from the U.S.S. Bunker Hill
Marshall Islands Campaign
1944
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Japan From Train Window
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Steel Worker, Pittsburgh
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Marine Mop-up
Following Japanese Suicide Charge
Saipan, 1944
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Frontline Soldier with Canteen
Saipan, June 1944
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Terry Moore crouches under shell attack
Okinawa, May 1945
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Marine Demolition Team Blasting Out a Cave on Hill 382
Iwo Jima, 1945
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Dr. Ceriani with injured child
1948
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Dr. Ceriani after the loss of a patient
1948
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Three Generations of Welsh Miners
1950
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Guardia Civil, Spain
1950
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The Spinner
1950
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The Wake
1950
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KKK, North Carolina
1951
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Dr. Albert Schweitzer Marking Timbers
during Construction Project
1954
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Hooded crowd with leader pointing to Smith
1955
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From "Pittsburgh"
1955
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From "Pittsburgh"
1955
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From "Pittsburgh"
1955
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Overview of hillside
houses
1955
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Mad Hands
1958
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Dylan
June, 1965
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Industrial Waste
from the Chisso Chemical Company
1972
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W. Eugene Smith took this picture of a wounded soldier in Okinawa in 1945
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Schweitzer, Aspen, Colorado
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