W. Eugene Smith - Dream Street. W. Eugene Smith's Pittsburgh Project (VERY FRESH COPY) - 2001

IMPORTANT PHOTO SERIES AND BOOK by legendary W. Eugene Smith (1918-1978) -
in VERY FRESH CONDITION.

After leaving Life magazine, Smith joined the MAGNUM Photos agency in 1955. There he was commissioned by Stefan Lorant to produce a photographic profile of the city of Pittsburgh. The project was supposed to take him a month and to produce 100 images. It ended up occupying more than two years and producing 13,000 photographic negatives. The intended book was never delivered to Lorant, and Smith's obsessive work was bailed out by money from MAGNUM, causing strain between Smith and the photo-journalist collective.

This is the NEW EDITION of the VERY SUCCESSFUL SINGLE-SELLER AUCTION by 5Uhr30.com
(Ecki Heuser, Cologne, Germany).

"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 -

"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 -

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A Lyndhurst Book in association with Norton, New York, London. 2001. First edition, first printing.

Paperback with flaps. 240 x 280 mm. 176 pages. Photos: W. Eugene Smith. Edited by Sam Stephenson. Text in English.

Condition:
Book inside excellent, very fresh and flawless; clean with no marks and with no foxing. Dustjacket very fresh, complete with no tears, with no taped tears and with no missing parts; little trace of use, scratch on the rear side, no other remarkable flaws or defects. Overall very fine, much better than usual condition.

Great photobook classic by W. Eugene Smith - in great condition.
published on the occasion of the exhibition "Dream Street: W. Eugene Smith's Pittsburgh Project", organized by the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh with the participation of the Collection and W. Eugene Smith Archive at the Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona.

"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)