W. EUGENE SMITH (1918-1978) IGOR STRAVINSKY, 1951, gelatin silver print, printed later, 10 1/2 x 13 3/8 in. (image); 11 x 14in. (sheet); estate stamp verso; Condition: Excellent; WES-0005.

Portrait of the pianist, composer and conductor at work, hands moving in a blur, leaning over sheet music. From the collection of the artist’s grandson.

CONDITION: For a comprehensive condition report, please email info@ethertongallery.com.

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W. EUGENE SMITH

At the age of 15, W. Eugene Smith was drawn to news photography and worked on assignments for the Wichita Eagle and the Wichita Beacon while still in high school. He earned a photography scholarship to Notre Dame University in Indiana, but left after only one year, and went to New York where he got a job at Newsweek. In 1938 he joined Black Star agency and worked as a freelance photographer for magazines including LIFE, Collier's and Harper's Bazaar. Early in his career Smith realized that photography had the power to raise social consciousness and affect change. Smith was eager to have his photographs seen by a wider audience and to photograph the most poignant and pressing stories so he joined LIFE Magazine in 1939. Although he had an on-and-off relationship with them until 1955, he was one of their most highly respected photographers. In 1942 Smith worked for the publishing firm Ziff-Davis covering the war in the South Pacific. Frustrated that he couldn't get close enough to the action, he returned to LIFE in 1944. In 1945, while documenting the invasion of Okinawa, Smith was hit by shrapnel and was unable to work for almost two years while he recovered from his wounds. After such a long break from making photographs, he wanted his next image to be significant. The result was a photograph of his two children walking out of the woods into the light called Walk to Paradise Garden.

Smith is best known for his LIFE photo-essays. Among his most successful are Country Doctor, 1948, Nurse Midwife, A Man of Mercy about Albert Schweitzer, and Spanish Village, 1951. He became President of the Photo League in 1949 and active in Magnum Photos from 1955-58; and in 1958 he began teaching at the New School for Social Research in New York City. Among his many accomplishments, Smith was a three-time recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship; won the ASMP Third Annual Photojournalism Conference award in 1959; was voted by Popular Photography Magazine as one of the "World's 10 Greatest Photographers;" and he was awarded an NEA grant in 1975.

In the early 1970s, Smith and his wife moved to Minamata, Japan to document the trial of Chisso Corp, which was accused of poisoning the villagers of Minamata by dumping untreated industrial mercury into Minamata Bay. Smith documented the trial, but also the plight of the afflicted villagers and the local economy. Smith believed that pollution was a global problem, and he wanted to make people conscious of it through his photographs. In 1977 Smith and his wife settled in Tucson, AZ where he taught at the University of Arizona and organized the donation of his archive to the Center for Creative Photography. Only a year later the injuries Smith sustained in Okinawa (from which he never recovered), a brutal assault in Japan, which blinded him in one eye and brought him near death, together with a history of alcoholism, took their toll, and the brilliant, uncompromising Smith passed away in 1978 in Tucson.

W. Eugene Smith's photographs are in the permanent collections of several institutions including: The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA); Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met); Getty Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Art Institute of Chicago, the Smithsonian Institution, the Library of Congress, Harvard University, Duke University and other prominent museums.

Copyright Lee Gallery

Excellent