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 world just does not fit conveniently into the format of a 35mm camera.
I didn’t write the rules. Why would I follow them?
The journalistic photographer can have no other than a personal approach; and it is impossible for him to be completely objective. Honest—yes. Objective—no.
If I can get them to think, get them to feel, get them to see, then I've done about all that I can as a teacher.
I am constantly torn between the attitude of the conscientious journalist who is a recorder and interpreter of the facts and of the creative artist who often is necessarily at poetic odds with the literal facts.
Many claim I am a photographer of tragedy. In the greater sense I am not, for though I often photograph where the tragic emotion is present, the result is almost invariably affirmative.
Available light is any damn light that is available!
In music I still prefer the minor key, and in printing I like the light coming from the dark. I like pictures that surmount the darkness, and many of my photographs are that way. It is the way I see photographically. For practical reasons, I think it looks better in print too.
... to became neighbours and friends instead of journalists. This is the way to make your finest photographs.
What use having a great depth of field, if there is not an adequate depth of feeling?
My pictures are complex and so am I.
Up to and including the moment of exposure, the photographer is working in an undeniably subjective way. By his choice of technical approach, by the selection of the subject matterand by his decision as to the exact cinematic instant of exposure, he is blending the variables of interpretation into an emotional whole.
I think photojournalism is documentary photography with a purpose.