Eugene Smith was possibly the most eloquent photographer ever. He was certainly the bravest. In the photo above, he is standing up while everyone else is cowering. His caption was:
sticks and stones and bits of human bones, blasting on Iwo Jima. In the photo below, a Marine attempts to shrink into the ground during a mortar barrage on Okinawa.
Smith, again, is standing up to get the picture. His luck ran out a few days later as he stood during another barrage to photograph those taking cover. Hit with shrapnel and nearly killed, he underwent 32 operations over the next two years. During that time, he took no photographs. He wondered if he would ever be able to hold a camera again. It turned out he could, but he found a new problem. He worried that after immersing himself so entirely in the horrors of war, he might never again be able to conjure the belief necessary to continue photographing people. Simply, without a fierce belief in what he was doing, he could not work. One day in 1947, he went out for a walk with his children and for the first time since Okinawa, he carried a camera. He took the photograph below, and proved to himself that he could believe again.
Notes:
- I tweaked the photos a little bit in photoshop. This was not done lightly. Smith was also a fanatic about printing. He would print a photo hundreds of times if necessary to achieve exactly what he wanted. As a result, his prints are as close to perfect as it is possible to get. I cannot improve on them in any way. However, through scanning and reproduction on the web, things get added and removed. My minimal tweaking was only to fix obvious flaws from that process.
- Despite research, I was unable to determine who exactly owns the copyrights to these photos. If anyone cares to clarify, I will give proper attribution. However, I assert fair use in posting them to this blog. Smith's images are so emotional and powerful that once seen, they can never be forgotten. They belong to everyone who has ever seen them. I think that is what Smith was trying to acheive.
