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Anyone here remember W. Eugene Smith?

I have and enjoy his Jazz Loft Project book. A passionate man.

Dale
 
Doesn't look like an old Valoy to me, but a Beseler.
 
I first saw this in a magazine many years ago when I was a school kid, and it's stuck in my mind ever since. I think it's the closest I've seen a photograph come to a Rembrandt painting. The lighting, the composition, the facial expressions, the quality of the printing all attest to Smith's mastery of the medium. All those elements work perfectly together to create an emotional impact and a sense of "being there" one rarely sees.



Downloaded from http://www.museoreinasofia.es/en/collection/artwork/spanish-wake. Unfortunately, the scan does not do justice to the tones, especially the black levels. Brightness and contrast adjusted to more closely match the print as I remember it.
 
chip j said:
Doesn't look like an old Valoy to me, but a Beseler.
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The Valoy's to his left in the last picture, poor scan there - in the Lustrum 'Darkroom' book it's much clearer. Other enlarger is an Omega D2 with cold light head. From the looks of things, the Omega was used rarely & probably for 6x6 if the carrier on the wall is any indication.

Also worth noting how relatively small the sink is & the number of safelights scattered around!
 
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Look at the lower right eyelid of the woman in the bottom right - it was fairly notoriously ferricyanided to make it seem as if she's looking in the opposite direction to which she actually is - ie to make her appear to be looking in the compositionally 'correct' direction.
 
Interesting. Was it notorious because it was so obvious, or because it was considered too much of a "manipulation" of reality?
 
afriman said:
Interesting. Was it notorious because it was so obvious, or because it was considered too much of a "manipulation" of reality?
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Mostly because in the 70's/ 80's when it was first being written about, it was a common delusion that 'documentary' photographers had some sort of panoptical ability & didn't rearrange scenes to suit their compositional aims or manipulate the audience's emotions by printing choices/ retouching. This delusion still persists today. Smith had no qualms about it, but I don't think he ever saw himself as pretending to impartiality, & I think he was more interested in telling a truthful story, even if it involved a bit of 'ecstatic truth' (to borrow a Werner Herzog-ism).
 
I read this manipulation a few times. Does anyone have an image showing the "original"?
 
Richard Man said:
I read this manipulation a few times. Does anyone have an image showing the "original"?
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Arrow points to where the spot of ferricyanide was used - you can see quite clearly which direction she's actually looking in.
 
Lachlan Young said:
View attachment 208813
Arrow points to where the spot of ferricyanide was used - you can see quite clearly which direction she's actually looking in.
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Thanks.

OK, I am the dumb one here. I tried to block out the added white spot, and to my eyes, before and after both show that she's looking to image's lower right and not a whole lot of changes in the direction of the gaze. What am I suppose to be seeing?
 

It's tricky to un-see where she's actually looking after you notice it, but it's supposed (in a repro print perhaps 13.5" on long side & printed on not the finest linescreen in the world in LIFE) to confuse the eye enough to believe that it's the white of her eye & that she's looking at the body along with everyone else.
 

I see. I have never seen the original Life treatment, but only in books (I have many of Smith's books) and online images, and her eye looks to me as I said: looking to the image lower right, and I found that very appealing, actually.

Thanks.
 
I always thought it was the woman on the far left who had been manipulated....
 
Richard Man said:
I see. I have never seen the original Life treatment, but only in books (I have many of Smith's books) and online images, and her eye looks to me as I said: looking to the image lower right, and I found that very appealing, actually.

Thanks.
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I also suspect that it's been through several variations whenever Smith printed it - given enough time, we could probably spot every area he ferricyanided.

And compared to the level of retouching that Bill Brandt did (extensive & up to & including white gouache on specular highlights), it's relatively minor.
 
It may be hard to determine what the original negative really looked like as Smith may have only allowed publication of his final "manipulated" prints. I have the Life magazine press copy of this image from 1951, when it was first published. It is printed somewhat lighter than some museum-quality prints I have seen, but I have heard that was done to accommodate Life's reproduction process at that time. To me, it appears likely that the eyes of the woman on the left have been altered, but with the woman on the right it is harder to tell. Apologies for the quality of this digital snap, taken at an angle to unsuccessfully reduce some reflections from the glass, and the print itself has been folded and scuffed from years of handling, but it's the history on the back of the print that makes it valuable for me.



 
This picture is always held up as how "Smith manipulated his prints" but we can't even decide on exactly which eye is the famously doctored one. ;-)
 

Perceptive.
 

Yes, but of course all of that is beside the points made by those two greats.as we both surely agree.
 
jtk said:
Yes, but of course all of that is beside the points made by those two greats.as we both surely agree.
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Absolutely - they did it because they felt it made their point better & neither believed that they were some sort of 'straight' documentarians.
 
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