Eugene Smith: A Master of Metaphor and Ethical Integrity

Eugene Smith's work can be likened to walking into a grand cathedral, where one is immediately struck by its beauty and majesty. However, upon closer inspection, the exterior gives way to a sense of monstrosity, which belies the elegance within. This dichotomy is reflective of Smith's own life and career, with his photography serving as a window into the world he saw around him.

Smith's body of work, particularly in his Jazz Loft project, is staggering in its scope. With over 11,000 images, Pittsburgh stands as a testament to his vision and skill. Yet, despite this monumental achievement, Smith was often left wanting more. The sheer scale of his output makes it difficult to fully appreciate his work, with many images remaining unseen due to the constraints of space and time. This is a challenge that continues to fascinate and frustrate in equal measure.

Smith's approach to photography was guided by a strong sense of ethics and integrity. As a photojournalist, he held himself to high standards, both as an artist and as a professional. His commitment to this code of conduct often led to friction with clients, particularly when they attempted to dictate the terms of his work. One notable example is his departure from Life Magazine, which was prompted by his refusal to shoot in medium format against their wishes.

Despite these challenges, Smith's vision remained unyielding. He worked within the strict confines of photojournalism, yet continued to push the boundaries of what was possible within those constraints. His ability to capture light and atmosphere in indoor settings was unparalleled, and this skill served him well throughout his career. Smith's ability to anticipate and react to the changing light around him is a testament to his remarkable instinct as a photographer.

The demands of Smith's work only added to his reputation as a master of his craft. His photography was not just about capturing moments in time, but also about conveying a sense of atmosphere and mood. In this, he excelled, using the available light to create images that were both intimate and epic in scale. The result is a body of work that continues to inspire and awe, even after decades.

As we explore Smith's work further, it becomes clear that his legacy extends far beyond his individual projects. His commitment to ethics and integrity serves as a model for photographers everywhere, and his innovative approach to light and atmosphere continues to influence generations of artists. In the coming weeks, we will delve deeper into specific projects and exhibitions featuring Eugene Smith's work, providing a more detailed look at this remarkable photographer.

Eugene Smith: A Photojournalist Unafraid to Speak Truth to Power

Smith's commitment to ethics and integrity was not limited to his personal code of conduct. As a photojournalist, he had a responsibility to use his craft to speak truth to power, rather than simply capturing images for the sake of aesthetics. This is evident in his work on Alfred Stieglitz, where Smith captured intimate portraits of his subject that revealed a deeper understanding of the man behind the public persona.

Smith's work on Stieglitz is a prime example of his ability to use photography as a tool for social commentary. By capturing images that were both personal and political, Smith was able to shed light on the complexities of his subject's life. This approach is reflective of Smith's broader philosophy, which held that photography should be used to challenge societal norms and expectations.

One of the most striking aspects of Smith's work is its ability to transcend the boundaries of time and space. His images can evoke a sense of place and atmosphere that is both immediate and timeless. In this, he reminds us of the power of photography as a medium for storytelling and social commentary. As we explore Smith's work further, it becomes clear that his legacy extends far beyond his individual projects, influencing generations of photographers and artists.

Eugene Smith: The Art of Observation

Smith's ability to observe and capture the world around him was a hallmark of his career. His photographs are often described as "portraits" because they so thoroughly capture the essence of their subjects. This is due in part to his remarkable ability to anticipate and react to changing light conditions, which allowed him to create images that were both intimate and epic in scale.

Smith's observation skills were honed through years of practice and experience, allowing him to develop a sixth sense for the world around him. He could sense when a moment was about to unfold, and quickly capture it before it was lost forever. This ability to observe and respond to his surroundings was key to his success as a photographer, and continues to inspire artists today.

In many ways, Smith's work can be seen as a celebration of the observer's role in photography. By capturing images that are both personal and social, he highlights the importance of observation in understanding the world around us. As we continue to explore Smith's work, it becomes clear that his legacy extends far beyond his individual projects, influencing generations of photographers and artists who continue to seek out new ways to observe and capture the world.

Eugene Smith: A Life of Vision and Innovation

As we look back on Eugene Smith's remarkable career, it is clear that he was a man of vision and innovation. His commitment to ethics and integrity served as a model for generations of photographers, while his innovative approach to light and atmosphere continues to inspire artists today.

Smith's legacy extends far beyond his individual projects, influencing the course of photography history in profound ways. His ability to capture the essence of his subjects, combined with his remarkable observational skills, made him one of the greatest photographers of all time. As we continue to explore Smith's work, it becomes clear that his vision and innovation continue to inspire generations of artists.

In the coming weeks, we will delve deeper into specific projects and exhibitions featuring Eugene Smith's work, providing a more detailed look at this remarkable photographer. We will also explore the ways in which Smith's legacy continues to influence photography today, as well as examining the challenges and opportunities facing photographers in the modern era.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enin this episode I want to take a look at the work of w Eugene Smith and W Eugene Smith was probably one of the most prolific in many ways the most brilliant and one of the most important photo journalists to come out of the United States in the mid 20th century if you're not familiar with his work um I will say that Eugene Smith can be somewhat overwhelming because of the sheer volume of it and if you are familiar with his work you know what I'm talking about Eugene Smith rarely worked with single images he liked to work in what was referred to in the 1950s as the photo essay and the way the photo essay worked if you consider where media was in the 1950s versus where it is today we didn't have the plethora of cable channels or Internet or any of those things and there were several Publications Life Magazine was one of the big ones that would send a photographer out in the field to cover a story they would come back and the story would be printed over a series of magazine spreads and multiple images that would work together to tell the story and Eugene Smith was one of the Masters of this medium and it was one of the things that uh just really made him one of the Brilliant Minds in photojournalism and his work is also very complex um as I mentioned the sheer volume of it so what I want to do is give you a brief overview of his career and his work today and in the coming weeks I'm going to do some additional episodes where we can really dive into specific projects and talk about the work and so anyway we'll go ahead and get started with the bio today uh Eugene Smith was born in 1918 in Witchita Kansas and by the time he had graduated high school he was already working as a photo journalist for several local newspapers and ended up going to New York and he landed a job with a photo agent up there that provided freelance work for many of the big Publications up there including Mall's CER uh New York Times Life magazine and one of the interesting things of about Eugene's work that made him very desirable to be hired was his ability to light interiors and I think this is very interesting too if you look at where flash photography is today compared to where it was in the 1950s a lot of The Flash photography at that time was very garish looking uh usually things were overlit um most people put the camera or The Flash right on top of the camera and would use that to do indoor photography whereas Smith uh employed some simple techniques but they were things that nobody else was doing at that time getting the C the flash off of the camera um using that to Accent along with natural light within the room like light coming through a window or a lamp or something like that and what I love about this and why I think this is such an interesting Hallmark of Eugene's work because this would follow him his entire career is that this was not an impressive move from a technical standpoint necessarily because you just didn't know notice it it made the scene feel very natural and I think that is the kind of Genius that you see a lot in Smith's work and what makes it really something special by 1942 Eugene Smith went to Japan for the first of three major trips that he did there throughout his career and in 1942 he went as an embedded photo correspondent with the US Marines during their island hopping venture between uh iima Guam and okanawa when Smith began to shoot photos he went into the war effort um hoping to get a sense of patriotism and and pride in his country through photographing the war but once he got there this played a very different story The photographs that he made during World War 2 are very brutal in Smith's own words he was hoping they would provide a reminder of this brutality and in his words how stupid it really was to be even at War Eugene Smith's involvement photographing the war came to an end in 1945 he was on the island of okanawa and was hit by a shell that went through his left hand and into his face and injured him pretty seriously and it took him about 2 years to recover from this during his recovery Smith's name was gaining a wider reputation based on the work that he had done at this point and he was ultimately invited by Edward styken to participate in the family of man exhibition and the photograph that was used in there is often considered pretty iconic uh in terms of when we think of family of man this is one of the shots that comes to mind it's called A Walk To Paradise Garden which is interesting because most of Smith's work ends up being photo essay based or series-based and what we have here is a single image that he's kind of known for uh it is a remarkable image and it is significant as Edward Sten was building the collection at the Museum of Modern Art at that time to include photography that a lot of what we had considered to be commercial work or photojournalism was now being seen and viewed as fine art and I think this is a pretty epic contribution to just the history of photography in that sense by the 1950s Smith was working for Life Magazine exclusively in New York and this is when we start to see uh Smith's work mature into the photo essay genre that we know it as today Life Magazine ran a series of photo essay spreads that were widely publicized extremely popular and they included things like the country doctor and the nurse Midwife the final photo essay that Smith did for Life Magazine was a story on Albert schwitzer and it had dealt with his missionary work with leper victims in Africa Upon returning um we start to see where Eugene Smith um is a very determined individual with a very clear definition of who he is and how he will work and it was revealed later that at least one of these images was heavily manipulated before Life Magazine ran it however the set is still brilliant but it did sever the relationship and Eugene Smith quit Life magazine and decided to walk away from the whole thing Eugene Smith was known throughout his career as having a bit of a thorny personality and I think that this probably worked for him I mean when you consider a photographer who works on this level um The Genius involved um and I don't use that word casually um he had a very clear definition of who he was how he wanted his work to be the standard at which he wanted to work and that talent shows because not only was he extremely prolific but extremely consistent there aren't a whole lot of really bad Eugene Smith photographs in fact that's an understatement they're all extremely good it's a bit of the Mozart effect in some ways that he just made an incredible volume of interesting photographs what's interesting is after leaving Life Magazine he took a job with the Magnum photo agency and his first assignment was to go to the city of Pittsburgh to do a small project that was supposed to take 3 weeks and the ultimate goal was was to do a series of photos for an urban renewal project he was given a budget of $1,200 and a $500 advance to go do this well Smith goes to Pittsburgh and begins working he hires a photo assistant he moves to Pittsburgh and builds a space with a dark room in it and the 3-we project turned into 3 years and it was pretty sporadic how he worked it was very intense for the first five months and then continued here and there weeks afterwards but in Smith's mind there was a story to be told in Pittsburgh that completely transcended the job and why he was there this is where I think we have a Crossroads of not only what is the genius of W jeene Smith and this ability to see that there was a much bigger story and something more important there than the client and this is also where we see kind of the craziness start to begin um you the pictures from the series are amazing the project took 3 years at the end there were over 11,000 pictures that were made this cost Eugene Smith his first marriage um there was a lawsuit that had come up he had racked up a ton of debt with Magnum and it was completely disaster what's interesting is Smith was very proud of this volume of work but at the same time viewed the project as sort of a failure in some ways I would actually um speculate that this is what to me makes Eugene Smith um a figure that was way ahead of its time and when you consider that we have over 11,000 images that exist from this one project that's more than we can comprehend or display you can't really do an exhibition that would have a space large enough to accommodate that volume of images at the same time it would also take volumes of books and to print them at the Quality that they would deserve to be printed at would be very expensive and so unfortunately this is one of the reasons why we see a lot of times especially with the book side of things that Eugene Smith is kind of underrepresented and in some ways the quality of books that have been published on his work are not always up to par and a lot of that has to do with just the sheer volume of material that there is by 1957 Eugene Smith moved back to New York City into mid toown Loft that was occupied by a very young Harold Feinstein who was moving out as well as dick Cary and Hall Overton who were both Jazz musicians and because there was this interesting mix of musicians and artists living there and particularly with Hall Overton and Dick K's associations with the New York Jazz scene at that time this became the location for allight jazz Jam sessions which included really a who's who of everybody who was in New York at that time it included tonius monk Roy Haynes chick Korea um Ronald Kirk and many others and what's interesting is that Smith being the uh compulsive uh workaholic that he was not only began to take photographs but actually got a series of microphones and tape recorders and wired the entire apartment for sound and in the next several years um started to record and document these Late Night Jam sessions uh we know this today is the Jazz Loft project in the end there was over 4,000 hours of audio recordings that included everything from Jam sessions to to some pretty important moments such as Thelonius Monk talking to Hall Overton rehearsing for a very Pinnacle concert series that he did in New York City there were conversations on the street there were telephone calls that were recorded there were uh TV shows that were recorded late night radio it literally was everything so we had about 4,000 hours of audio that exist and over 40,000 photographs most of these are all cataloged and exist today in the archives at the center for Creative Photography in Arizona and what's interesting is a a couple years ago the jazzloft project was um it was a project that aimed to do some cataloging there was an exhibition in a book that came out of this uh wnyu and I will link to these in the show description released a series of basically put together and produced audio tapes that give some highlights of what some of the recordings were like and there was an exhibition in a book that followed I have no idea where this project is today they have a website for it which I'll link up as well and it the last news update had been updated in 2012 so I don't know if that project is still ongoing or not but either way the Jazz Loft project is a a remarkable documentation of a jazz movement in New York City um in the 1950s that is like nothing else we've ever seen in 1971 Eugene Smith returned once again to Japan this time with his wife eileene to stay in the small fishing Village of minamata upon his arrival he discovered what was probably one of the most tragic coverups in human history uh what we know today is minamata disease and at the time there were people that were suffering these neurological side effects that manifested themselves in these epileptic type seizures it turns out upon further study that they had been ingesting fish that were Poisoned With Mercury out of the ocean at that time there was a company called the chiso corporation that operated out of Japan that made fertilizer and by 1971 the chiso corporation was an extremely large corporation that employed pretty much almost everyone in the area upon further research uh it was found that the chiso corporation had been dumping raw sewage which contained mercury into the ocean which was in turn poisoning fish which was in turn poisoning humans Minima disease is awful and Not only was it manifesting itself in adults who were consuming Mercury but it was also passed on by pregnant women to their unborn children and birth defects included everything from blindness and deafness to neurological disorders to basically being crippled and Eugene Smith at this point in his career had quite a bit of power and authority um based on his name and decided to expose this cover up for the world to see and this manifested itself uh that year in a very well-known photo essay he did Called Death flow from a pipe Eugene Smith also released his own book of images from this period on minamata disease as well one of his most famous images is from this period and it's an image of tamoko Yura who was suffering from birth defects uh in the bath with her mother bathing her and it is a beautiful photograph it's probably one of the most iconic single photographs that is recognized of Eugene Smith's work uh the lighting is absolutely brilliant it has all the Hallmarks of classic Eugene Smith composition um from the beautiful lighting aesthetic also to The Human Condition that is displayed here in the compassion of the mother bathing her daughter sadly enough one of the things you have to understand is the chiso corporation employed a great number of people in this region and so there was a large amount of hostility after the coverup of people who were afraid that shutting the corporation down would cost them their livelihood so there was a great deal of angst between those who were Pro chiso Corporation and those that weren't and so it actually once this Photograph became famous there was a lot of speculation that the umura family was benefiting financially from the publication of this photograph which was not the case but either way it was stopped being used around that time just out of courtesy to the family and Tomo's father actually allowed the photo to be published once again about 1997 after returning from Japan Eugene's Health was starting to go into Decline and he accepted a position teaching at the University of Arizona moved there so he could teach classes on photography and start to organize his archives and his collection there as well unfortunately within a month of arriving he suffered a stroke uh he did recover from this but a year later a second stroke took his life at the age of 59 Eugene Smith as you can tell from the photos in this bio is a very deep a very complex um I think at times a troubled individual uh somebody with extremely high expectations of himself and somebody who put his own output of work above everything else including family and his own health we're left behind with somebody who is just a rare talent in photography like that uh it's the Mozart effect he operated at this high level of consistency um and this enormous volume of of incredible work that we were left with the problem with Eugene Smith and I hinted this earlier is that I think he represents a man who is still to this day ahead of his time and when you look at the sheer volume of work at the high level of consistency which he produced the way I like to think of Eugene Smith um to put it into metaphor is like this um you know imagine walking you're on vacation you're walking down the street and you come up upon a temple or a cathedral um that is this you know some kind of religious building with this beautiful structure outside and this monstrosity to it that is just epic in proportion and has these beautiful stained glass windows and these small Port windows and you can look through these portals and you can start to see hints of the inside uh where you see even more stunning architecture and you see objects of religious significance that transcend humanity and I know this is getting a little colorful but that's what Eugene Smith is like to me you can't go in all we can do is kind of look at this from these portals and when I say that I mean that because the volume if you consider Pittsburgh is over 11,000 images in the Jazz Loft project is 40,000 um we can never see these Works in their in their entirety and seeing that Pittsburgh was a series and a unified project that Smith viewed and was very proud of even though he saw it as a failure how do you display that how do you go about showing that to people and that becomes the challenge with Eugene Smith you can do an exhibition but what kind of space do you have to have even for Pittsburgh with 11,000 images in it um people's attention spans even I think are play there or even publishing books you would have to do them in such a large volume it's such a high quality that it becomes very difficult if not impossible to do and so you jeene Smith is extremely interesting to me and he is an amazing photographer but that's kind of how I feel about his work sometimes is that you know we have glimpses through things that have been published that are known but there's so much more that's there that that has been not been uncovered and I think that's on the one hand one of the things that that is you know the sheer Brilliance of what went on with Eugene Smith the second thing and I think this is the most most important thing I think that made him when I use the word genius I don't use it likly lightly with Eugene Smith Jean Smith um was a photojournalist and had very strong ethics um that you know he held himself to a standard to and he held clients to a standard too he had a very specific way of working it was his way or the highway when he worked with people and a lot of times um you know this kind of nature created a lot of friction with clients it cost him his relationship with Life Magazine actually really early in his career Newsweek tried to get him to shoot medium format and he just quit and said I'm going to go work for life cuz they'll let me shoot 35mm and you know when you look at at what an artist's vision is and what their integrity is um you know equipment is you know he needs to use what he was comfortable with and so you know it's really easy for us as photographers to understand that situation but it didn't matter what professional circumstances got in the way Smith did what he did U the shots were never set up he worked U within the strict confines confinements of photojournalism even quitting Life Magazine over the Alfred Albert schwitzer shots and I think this is important too because not not only do you have somebody working in Within These strict confinements of you know only being able to Capture Moments and be a part of those but when you look at how much creativity Smith exuded within that confinement I think that's what becomes the most impressive he shows you what can be done and it is not an easy feat and of course he does it pulling it off like it's nothing it's just like breathing uh I mentioned early on he became in demand because of his ability to naturally light indoor situations well if you're trying to capture things that are off the cuff in an indoor situation you know you realize that Smith really had this six sense of you know before something was going to happen where the light needed to be where it needed to come from most of these are simple setups but the fact that he did them is what makes it so strong and so genius and it what made made his career made him very in demand as a photographer because that was something nobody else was doing anyway I want to look more at Eugene Smith's work in the coming weeks and I want to dive into some specific projects and talk about them and uh it's a very difficult ult uh thing to cover him in one episode so we will continue that in the coming weeks if you guys enjoyed this video please remember to like it and share it with your friends and as always subscribe to the Art of Photography so you'll always be up to dat on all the videos that I produce here until the next one I'll see you laterin this episode I want to take a look at the work of w Eugene Smith and W Eugene Smith was probably one of the most prolific in many ways the most brilliant and one of the most important photo journalists to come out of the United States in the mid 20th century if you're not familiar with his work um I will say that Eugene Smith can be somewhat overwhelming because of the sheer volume of it and if you are familiar with his work you know what I'm talking about Eugene Smith rarely worked with single images he liked to work in what was referred to in the 1950s as the photo essay and the way the photo essay worked if you consider where media was in the 1950s versus where it is today we didn't have the plethora of cable channels or Internet or any of those things and there were several Publications Life Magazine was one of the big ones that would send a photographer out in the field to cover a story they would come back and the story would be printed over a series of magazine spreads and multiple images that would work together to tell the story and Eugene Smith was one of the Masters of this medium and it was one of the things that uh just really made him one of the Brilliant Minds in photojournalism and his work is also very complex um as I mentioned the sheer volume of it so what I want to do is give you a brief overview of his career and his work today and in the coming weeks I'm going to do some additional episodes where we can really dive into specific projects and talk about the work and so anyway we'll go ahead and get started with the bio today uh Eugene Smith was born in 1918 in Witchita Kansas and by the time he had graduated high school he was already working as a photo journalist for several local newspapers and ended up going to New York and he landed a job with a photo agent up there that provided freelance work for many of the big Publications up there including Mall's CER uh New York Times Life magazine and one of the interesting things of about Eugene's work that made him very desirable to be hired was his ability to light interiors and I think this is very interesting too if you look at where flash photography is today compared to where it was in the 1950s a lot of The Flash photography at that time was very garish looking uh usually things were overlit um most people put the camera or The Flash right on top of the camera and would use that to do indoor photography whereas Smith uh employed some simple techniques but they were things that nobody else was doing at that time getting the C the flash off of the camera um using that to Accent along with natural light within the room like light coming through a window or a lamp or something like that and what I love about this and why I think this is such an interesting Hallmark of Eugene's work because this would follow him his entire career is that this was not an impressive move from a technical standpoint necessarily because you just didn't know notice it it made the scene feel very natural and I think that is the kind of Genius that you see a lot in Smith's work and what makes it really something special by 1942 Eugene Smith went to Japan for the first of three major trips that he did there throughout his career and in 1942 he went as an embedded photo correspondent with the US Marines during their island hopping venture between uh iima Guam and okanawa when Smith began to shoot photos he went into the war effort um hoping to get a sense of patriotism and and pride in his country through photographing the war but once he got there this played a very different story The photographs that he made during World War 2 are very brutal in Smith's own words he was hoping they would provide a reminder of this brutality and in his words how stupid it really was to be even at War Eugene Smith's involvement photographing the war came to an end in 1945 he was on the island of okanawa and was hit by a shell that went through his left hand and into his face and injured him pretty seriously and it took him about 2 years to recover from this during his recovery Smith's name was gaining a wider reputation based on the work that he had done at this point and he was ultimately invited by Edward styken to participate in the family of man exhibition and the photograph that was used in there is often considered pretty iconic uh in terms of when we think of family of man this is one of the shots that comes to mind it's called A Walk To Paradise Garden which is interesting because most of Smith's work ends up being photo essay based or series-based and what we have here is a single image that he's kind of known for uh it is a remarkable image and it is significant as Edward Sten was building the collection at the Museum of Modern Art at that time to include photography that a lot of what we had considered to be commercial work or photojournalism was now being seen and viewed as fine art and I think this is a pretty epic contribution to just the history of photography in that sense by the 1950s Smith was working for Life Magazine exclusively in New York and this is when we start to see uh Smith's work mature into the photo essay genre that we know it as today Life Magazine ran a series of photo essay spreads that were widely publicized extremely popular and they included things like the country doctor and the nurse Midwife the final photo essay that Smith did for Life Magazine was a story on Albert schwitzer and it had dealt with his missionary work with leper victims in Africa Upon returning um we start to see where Eugene Smith um is a very determined individual with a very clear definition of who he is and how he will work and it was revealed later that at least one of these images was heavily manipulated before Life Magazine ran it however the set is still brilliant but it did sever the relationship and Eugene Smith quit Life magazine and decided to walk away from the whole thing Eugene Smith was known throughout his career as having a bit of a thorny personality and I think that this probably worked for him I mean when you consider a photographer who works on this level um The Genius involved um and I don't use that word casually um he had a very clear definition of who he was how he wanted his work to be the standard at which he wanted to work and that talent shows because not only was he extremely prolific but extremely consistent there aren't a whole lot of really bad Eugene Smith photographs in fact that's an understatement they're all extremely good it's a bit of the Mozart effect in some ways that he just made an incredible volume of interesting photographs what's interesting is after leaving Life Magazine he took a job with the Magnum photo agency and his first assignment was to go to the city of Pittsburgh to do a small project that was supposed to take 3 weeks and the ultimate goal was was to do a series of photos for an urban renewal project he was given a budget of $1,200 and a $500 advance to go do this well Smith goes to Pittsburgh and begins working he hires a photo assistant he moves to Pittsburgh and builds a space with a dark room in it and the 3-we project turned into 3 years and it was pretty sporadic how he worked it was very intense for the first five months and then continued here and there weeks afterwards but in Smith's mind there was a story to be told in Pittsburgh that completely transcended the job and why he was there this is where I think we have a Crossroads of not only what is the genius of W jeene Smith and this ability to see that there was a much bigger story and something more important there than the client and this is also where we see kind of the craziness start to begin um you the pictures from the series are amazing the project took 3 years at the end there were over 11,000 pictures that were made this cost Eugene Smith his first marriage um there was a lawsuit that had come up he had racked up a ton of debt with Magnum and it was completely disaster what's interesting is Smith was very proud of this volume of work but at the same time viewed the project as sort of a failure in some ways I would actually um speculate that this is what to me makes Eugene Smith um a figure that was way ahead of its time and when you consider that we have over 11,000 images that exist from this one project that's more than we can comprehend or display you can't really do an exhibition that would have a space large enough to accommodate that volume of images at the same time it would also take volumes of books and to print them at the Quality that they would deserve to be printed at would be very expensive and so unfortunately this is one of the reasons why we see a lot of times especially with the book side of things that Eugene Smith is kind of underrepresented and in some ways the quality of books that have been published on his work are not always up to par and a lot of that has to do with just the sheer volume of material that there is by 1957 Eugene Smith moved back to New York City into mid toown Loft that was occupied by a very young Harold Feinstein who was moving out as well as dick Cary and Hall Overton who were both Jazz musicians and because there was this interesting mix of musicians and artists living there and particularly with Hall Overton and Dick K's associations with the New York Jazz scene at that time this became the location for allight jazz Jam sessions which included really a who's who of everybody who was in New York at that time it included tonius monk Roy Haynes chick Korea um Ronald Kirk and many others and what's interesting is that Smith being the uh compulsive uh workaholic that he was not only began to take photographs but actually got a series of microphones and tape recorders and wired the entire apartment for sound and in the next several years um started to record and document these Late Night Jam sessions uh we know this today is the Jazz Loft project in the end there was over 4,000 hours of audio recordings that included everything from Jam sessions to to some pretty important moments such as Thelonius Monk talking to Hall Overton rehearsing for a very Pinnacle concert series that he did in New York City there were conversations on the street there were telephone calls that were recorded there were uh TV shows that were recorded late night radio it literally was everything so we had about 4,000 hours of audio that exist and over 40,000 photographs most of these are all cataloged and exist today in the archives at the center for Creative Photography in Arizona and what's interesting is a a couple years ago the jazzloft project was um it was a project that aimed to do some cataloging there was an exhibition in a book that came out of this uh wnyu and I will link to these in the show description released a series of basically put together and produced audio tapes that give some highlights of what some of the recordings were like and there was an exhibition in a book that followed I have no idea where this project is today they have a website for it which I'll link up as well and it the last news update had been updated in 2012 so I don't know if that project is still ongoing or not but either way the Jazz Loft project is a a remarkable documentation of a jazz movement in New York City um in the 1950s that is like nothing else we've ever seen in 1971 Eugene Smith returned once again to Japan this time with his wife eileene to stay in the small fishing Village of minamata upon his arrival he discovered what was probably one of the most tragic coverups in human history uh what we know today is minamata disease and at the time there were people that were suffering these neurological side effects that manifested themselves in these epileptic type seizures it turns out upon further study that they had been ingesting fish that were Poisoned With Mercury out of the ocean at that time there was a company called the chiso corporation that operated out of Japan that made fertilizer and by 1971 the chiso corporation was an extremely large corporation that employed pretty much almost everyone in the area upon further research uh it was found that the chiso corporation had been dumping raw sewage which contained mercury into the ocean which was in turn poisoning fish which was in turn poisoning humans Minima disease is awful and Not only was it manifesting itself in adults who were consuming Mercury but it was also passed on by pregnant women to their unborn children and birth defects included everything from blindness and deafness to neurological disorders to basically being crippled and Eugene Smith at this point in his career had quite a bit of power and authority um based on his name and decided to expose this cover up for the world to see and this manifested itself uh that year in a very well-known photo essay he did Called Death flow from a pipe Eugene Smith also released his own book of images from this period on minamata disease as well one of his most famous images is from this period and it's an image of tamoko Yura who was suffering from birth defects uh in the bath with her mother bathing her and it is a beautiful photograph it's probably one of the most iconic single photographs that is recognized of Eugene Smith's work uh the lighting is absolutely brilliant it has all the Hallmarks of classic Eugene Smith composition um from the beautiful lighting aesthetic also to The Human Condition that is displayed here in the compassion of the mother bathing her daughter sadly enough one of the things you have to understand is the chiso corporation employed a great number of people in this region and so there was a large amount of hostility after the coverup of people who were afraid that shutting the corporation down would cost them their livelihood so there was a great deal of angst between those who were Pro chiso Corporation and those that weren't and so it actually once this Photograph became famous there was a lot of speculation that the umura family was benefiting financially from the publication of this photograph which was not the case but either way it was stopped being used around that time just out of courtesy to the family and Tomo's father actually allowed the photo to be published once again about 1997 after returning from Japan Eugene's Health was starting to go into Decline and he accepted a position teaching at the University of Arizona moved there so he could teach classes on photography and start to organize his archives and his collection there as well unfortunately within a month of arriving he suffered a stroke uh he did recover from this but a year later a second stroke took his life at the age of 59 Eugene Smith as you can tell from the photos in this bio is a very deep a very complex um I think at times a troubled individual uh somebody with extremely high expectations of himself and somebody who put his own output of work above everything else including family and his own health we're left behind with somebody who is just a rare talent in photography like that uh it's the Mozart effect he operated at this high level of consistency um and this enormous volume of of incredible work that we were left with the problem with Eugene Smith and I hinted this earlier is that I think he represents a man who is still to this day ahead of his time and when you look at the sheer volume of work at the high level of consistency which he produced the way I like to think of Eugene Smith um to put it into metaphor is like this um you know imagine walking you're on vacation you're walking down the street and you come up upon a temple or a cathedral um that is this you know some kind of religious building with this beautiful structure outside and this monstrosity to it that is just epic in proportion and has these beautiful stained glass windows and these small Port windows and you can look through these portals and you can start to see hints of the inside uh where you see even more stunning architecture and you see objects of religious significance that transcend humanity and I know this is getting a little colorful but that's what Eugene Smith is like to me you can't go in all we can do is kind of look at this from these portals and when I say that I mean that because the volume if you consider Pittsburgh is over 11,000 images in the Jazz Loft project is 40,000 um we can never see these Works in their in their entirety and seeing that Pittsburgh was a series and a unified project that Smith viewed and was very proud of even though he saw it as a failure how do you display that how do you go about showing that to people and that becomes the challenge with Eugene Smith you can do an exhibition but what kind of space do you have to have even for Pittsburgh with 11,000 images in it um people's attention spans even I think are play there or even publishing books you would have to do them in such a large volume it's such a high quality that it becomes very difficult if not impossible to do and so you jeene Smith is extremely interesting to me and he is an amazing photographer but that's kind of how I feel about his work sometimes is that you know we have glimpses through things that have been published that are known but there's so much more that's there that that has been not been uncovered and I think that's on the one hand one of the things that that is you know the sheer Brilliance of what went on with Eugene Smith the second thing and I think this is the most most important thing I think that made him when I use the word genius I don't use it likly lightly with Eugene Smith Jean Smith um was a photojournalist and had very strong ethics um that you know he held himself to a standard to and he held clients to a standard too he had a very specific way of working it was his way or the highway when he worked with people and a lot of times um you know this kind of nature created a lot of friction with clients it cost him his relationship with Life Magazine actually really early in his career Newsweek tried to get him to shoot medium format and he just quit and said I'm going to go work for life cuz they'll let me shoot 35mm and you know when you look at at what an artist's vision is and what their integrity is um you know equipment is you know he needs to use what he was comfortable with and so you know it's really easy for us as photographers to understand that situation but it didn't matter what professional circumstances got in the way Smith did what he did U the shots were never set up he worked U within the strict confines confinements of photojournalism even quitting Life Magazine over the Alfred Albert schwitzer shots and I think this is important too because not not only do you have somebody working in Within These strict confinements of you know only being able to Capture Moments and be a part of those but when you look at how much creativity Smith exuded within that confinement I think that's what becomes the most impressive he shows you what can be done and it is not an easy feat and of course he does it pulling it off like it's nothing it's just like breathing uh I mentioned early on he became in demand because of his ability to naturally light indoor situations well if you're trying to capture things that are off the cuff in an indoor situation you know you realize that Smith really had this six sense of you know before something was going to happen where the light needed to be where it needed to come from most of these are simple setups but the fact that he did them is what makes it so strong and so genius and it what made made his career made him very in demand as a photographer because that was something nobody else was doing anyway I want to look more at Eugene Smith's work in the coming weeks and I want to dive into some specific projects and talk about them and uh it's a very difficult ult uh thing to cover him in one episode so we will continue that in the coming weeks if you guys enjoyed this video please remember to like it and share it with your friends and as always subscribe to the Art of Photography so you'll always be up to dat on all the videos that I produce here until the next one I'll see you later\n"