W. Eugene Smith
W. Eugene Smith
William Eugene Smith, was an American photojournalist, renowned for the dedication he devoted to his projects and his uncompromising professional and ethical standards. Smith developed the photo essay into a sophisticated visual form. His most famous studies included brutally vivid World War II photographs, the clinic of Dr Schweitzer in French Equatorial Africa, the city of Pittsburgh, the dedication of an American country doctor and a nurse midwife, and the pollution which damaged the health of the residents of Minamata...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhotographer
Date of Birth30 December 1918
CountryUnited States of America
Photography is a small voice, at best, but sometimes one photograph, or a group of them, can lure our sense of awareness.
The purpose of all art is to cause a deep and emotion, also one that is entertaining or pleasing. Out of the depth and entertainment comes value.
What's the best type of light? Why that would be available light... and by available light I mean any damn light is available.
Hardening of the categories causes art disease.
My camera, my intentions stopped no man from falling. Nor did they aid him after he had fallen. It could be said that photographs be damned for they bind no wounds. Yet, I reasoned, if my photographs could cause compassionate horror within the viewer, they might also prod the conscience of that viewer into taking action.
I can’t stand these damn shows on museum walls with neat little frames, where you look at the images as if they were pieces of art. I want them to be pieces of life!
I would that my photographs might be, not the coverage of a news event, but an indictment of war.
I was after a set of pictures, so that when people looked at them they would say, ‘This is war’-that the people who were in the war would believe that I had truthfully captured what they had gone through I worked in the framework that war is horrible. I want to carry on what I have tried to do in these pictures. War is a concentrated unit in the world and these things are clearly and cleanly seen. Things like race prejudice, poverty, hatred and bigotry are sprawling things in civilian life, and not so easy to define as war.