W. Eugene Smith - The Camera as Conscience - 1998

HIGHLY IMPRESSIVE MONOGRAPH AND WORK OVERVIEW by legendary American photographer W. Eugene Smith ("Pittsburgh Project"), who worked for "Life" and for "Magnum Photo Agency".

"I think that Gene Smith was the last American photographer who believed that his work was the message and he was the messenger to tell you that it is true and that it will survive."
- Robert Frank -

This poignant assessment of W. Eugene Smith comes from legendary documentary photographer Robert Frank.
It perfectly captures Smith's uncompromising moral dedication to his craft during the height of the mid-century photo essay era.

WITH ORIGINAL DUSTJACKET.

VERY FRESH CONDITION.

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"A photo is a small voice, at best, but sometimes - just sometimes - one photograph or a group of them can lure our senses into awareness. Much depends upon the viewer; in some, photographs can summon enough emotion to be a catalyst to thought."
- W. Eugene Smith -

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Thames and Hudson, London. 1998. First edition, first printing.

Hardcover with dustjacket. 255 x 310 mm. 352 pages. 352 duotone photographs. Edited by Gilles Mora and John T. Hill. Essay by Gabriel Bauret, John T. Hill, Gilles Mora, Serge Tisseron and Alan Trachtenberg. Text in English.

Condition:
Book inside and outside excellent, like new and unread; clean with no marks and with no foxing. Dustjacket super fresh with perfect front and spine; rear side with bigger scratch, otherwise fresh and flawless. Overall very fine condition.

Great photobook by W. Eugene Smith with original dustjacket - in very fresh condition.

"My station in life is to capture the action of life, the life of the world, its humor, its tragedies, in other words, life as it is. A true picture, unposed and real...I i am shooting a beggar. I want the distress in his eyes, if a steel factory i want the symbol of strength and power that is there...I want (my pictures) to be symbolic of something...I realize that this is pitiful effort to explain my philosophy of photography, but it is out of this haze that the fulfilling of my ambition will be. Long years are ahead, probably years of hardship, but what care i if i can succeed."
(W. Eugene Smith, 1936)

"William Eugene Smith was born in 1918 in Wichita, Kansas. He took his first photographs at the age of 15 for two local newspapers. In 1936, Smith entered Notre Dame University in Wichita, where a special photographic scholarship was created for him. A year later he left the university and went to New York City, and after studying with Helene Sanders at the New York Institute of Photography. In 1937, he began working for News-Week (later Newsweek). He was fired for refusing to use medium-format cameras and joined the Black Star agency as a freelancer.
Smith worked as a war correspondent for Flying magazine (1943-44), and a year later for LIFE. He followed the island-hopping American offensive against Japan and suffered severe injuries while simulating battle conditions for Parade, which required him to undergo surgery for the next two years.
Once recuperated, Eugene Smith worked for LIFE again between 1947 and 1955, before resigning to join Magnum as an associate. In 1957, he became a full member of Magnum. Smith was fanatically dedicated to his mission as a photographer. Because of this dedication, he was often regarded by editors as ‘troublesome’.
A year after he moved to Tucson, to teach at the University of Arizona, Smith died of a stroke. His archives are held at the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona.
Today, Smith’s legacy lives on through the W. Eugene Smith Fund to promote ‘humanistic photography’, founded in 1980, which awards photographers for exceptional accomplishments in the field."
(Magnum website)