w. eugene smith and his technique

[Curt]

I'm completely unfamiliar with the man. What is he known for? Portraits? Nudes? Still lifes? Landscapes? Street photography? Commercial photography? Was he stylistically a modernist?

LIFE.

 

[ooze]

IMO, if there is one photographer who deserves a properly done retrospective book today, it is E.Smith. I have three of his books, the big "The Camera as a Conscience", the Pittsburgh project and the small book by Phaidon. I have probably browsed through several others.

"The Camera as a Conscience" has a lot of historical information but the choice of photographs leaves me confused. At the end of this book is a chapter about Smith's printing skills where two versions of the photo "Madness" are compared, an unmanipulated work print and a finished print. The difference is stunning of course. But then, the whole book seems to consist of mainly work prints where Smith's printing just doesn't show. Still, I think it is a worthwhile addition to a library just for the historical stuff.

The Pittsburgh book is I think a disaster. Again, the printing lets it down.

The only book which goes some way to show Smith's printing skills is the tiny Phaidon book. A publisher should put that quality into a much bigger (size+content) retrospective book.

 

[phritz phantom]

There is fantastic biography book: W. Eugene Smith : Shadow & substance : the life and work of an American photographer / by Jim Hughes.

i just got this through ebay. from the u.s., might take some time to arrive.

"Let the Truth be the Prejudice".

ah, thanks for describing that one. i thought this was a picture-only book of the series on albert schweitzer.
all this does sound a little like all the uppers made his moods a little unstable. has his jazz photography ever been published? i'd really like to see some of those.

IMO, if there is one photographer who deserves a properly done retrospective book today, it is E.Smith. I have three of his books, the big "The Camera as a Conscience", the Pittsburgh project and the small book by Phaidon. I have probably browsed through several others.

i absolutely agree about the retrospective book. i'd love to have a big book with all the images (or a good cross section) and some quality info.
the only book that's still regularly available around here is the pittsburgh one. but i'll see if i can dig up "camera as conscience" and the phaidon one too.

 

[John Koehrer]

I've never seen original Smith prints but IMO I'm not convinced he was a great printer.
Much of his work appears very contrasty and he wasn't shy about manipulating prints or adding
components to them. For two examples, The picture of Schweitzer with the hand in silhouette in front
of him, the hand is not in the original negative and there are at least two variations withe the hand in different positions.
The print in the Spanish village has had the eyes of at least one woman both brightened and changed the direction in which she was looking.
To my mind this isn't so different than combing different negatives in Photoshop. This is more important when you consider the sort of work he did.

 

[phritz phantom]

I've never seen original Smith prints but IMO I'm not convinced he was a great printer.
Much of his work appears very contrasty and he wasn't shy about manipulating prints or adding
components to them. For two examples, The picture of Schweitzer with the hand in silhouette in front
of him, the hand is not in the original negative and there are at least two variations withe the hand in different positions.
The print in the Spanish village has had the eyes of at least one woman both brightened and changed the direction in which she was looking.
To my mind this isn't so different than combing different negatives in Photoshop. This is more important when you consider the sort of work he did.

well, as a photographic purist, you certainly look at it this way. i'm definitely no purist, so i'm fine with it. and the contrasty look is a matter of taste. i love it. most of the b/w stuff i see is too flat and greyish in my eyes.

in the article in "darkroom" he explains the story behind the schweitzer image. due to a a bad lens and the light coming towards the lens, the bottom part of the image was fogged. but he absolutely wanted the image as the cover piece, so he didn't throw the negative out, but had to print it. he said, he printed the original once, but it was so much work, that all later copies are from a copy negative.

i'm fine with the image manipulation, since i find the outcome to be stunning and on the other hand smith had to work quick and with available light. i think in "death scene" he overdid the "articificial light direction" a little, but i don't mind it at all, because it fits perfect. looks just like a caravaggio.

 

[ooze]

in the article in "darkroom" he explains the story behind the schweitzer image. due to a a bad lens and the light coming towards the lens, the bottom part of the image was fogged. but he absolutely wanted the image as the cover piece, so he didn't throw the negative out, but had to print it. he said, he printed the original once, but it was so much work, that all later copies are from a copy negative.

Unfortunately, Smith was not telling the truth here. In the book "The Negative", John Loengard goes after the negatives of historically important images. He takes a picture of each negative or collection of negatives, mostly with the hands of a curator or inheritor. One of the images is this particular Schweitzer picture. Loengard had already read the section in "Darkroom" and to his amazement finds that the negative is perfectly fine. The picture of the negative certainly doesn't reveal any flaw. It's Plus-X film

And by the way, the picture shows several strips of negatives, all from the Schweitzer series, with Schweitzer in different positions etc., i.e. it is highly unlikely that that negative is from a copy print.

 

[Karl K]

Obsessive and Compulsive, but Brilliant

I bought a book about Gene Smith last year, but I can't find it right now. I do remember that he was fired from almost every job that came his way because of his refusal to "follow the rules". He was consistently late delivering his prints because he insisted on printing them himself. Shouting matches with editors were commonplace. Yet he has delivered some haunting images, such as the Minamata photos, and Walk to Paradise Garden. Of the latter, it was said that it took him two days in the darkroom to finally print that negative to his satisfaction.

 

[ajmiller]

The book was mentioned in the original posters nytimes article - came across the website the other day. As a jazz fan and a photographer this looks like a must-buy:

http://www.jazzloftproject.org/

 

[cowanw]

I bought a book about Gene Smith last year, but I can't find it right now. I do remember that he was fired from almost every job that came his way because of his refusal to "follow the rules". He was consistently late delivering his prints because he insisted on printing them himself. Shouting matches with editors were commonplace. Yet he has delivered some haunting images, such as the Minamata photos, and Walk to Paradise Garden. Of the latter, it was said that it took him two days in the darkroom to finally print that negative to his satisfaction.

Meanwhile his kids were still wondering in the woods.

 

[phritz phantom]

Unfortunately, Smith was not telling the truth here. In the book "The Negative", John Loengard ...

strange, i wonder why he would lie about that. it is a rather big part in the story and he also jokingly added that all the stories of him taking five days for each negative to print were based on this one difficult negative....

The book was mentioned in the original posters nytimes article - came across the website the other day. As a jazz fan and a photographer this looks like a must-buy:

http://www.jazzloftproject.org/

this is great. i will definitely get this too. it should be out end of this month.

beware. the layout is rather confusing, the rectangle in the upper left corner is the menu with the links to info, pictures and sound samples. i've been listening to the samples for quite a while now. at the end of "walter trego" there is a long track of smith having a conversation (including talking about his work) with a policeman. unfortunately i can barely understand half of it. the music it top-notch at times (especially the music in "chaos manor" in my opinion).

 

[phritz phantom]

after quite a while waiting, i finally received and started reading the "shadows and substance" biography. quite a thick book, discarded from an us-library. while the story is very interesting and informative, it's bit of a slow read: too much (superflous) information for my taste; but, well, better too much, than too little.
now, i've found the perfect compagnon for the reading: the google image life magazine photo archive!
google images

there is a huge amount of w.e.smith pics available (everything that was printed/ taken while he was under contract with Life?) and so far i was able to find most pics described in the book, starting with the japanese war. very much recommended for everyone interested in his pics. most people probably already know about this, but i completely forgot about the Life photo archive until i stumbled on it again today.

finally a question:
in the pic below, smith painted the background of the portrait black. what's the reason for doing that? do you think he planned to print a portrait in front of a black background from this negative? or do you think the coloring of the (contact?)print was just for playing around or experimenting? i wonder if it's possible to eliminate the background of a pic like that in some way to make a high quality/ presentable portrait with a black background?

 

[erikg]

Hard to say that it was Smith who retouched this print, but stuff like that was very common in the pre digital era, newspapers and magazines did all sorts of stuff to make an image work for whatever use they had in mind, here it looks like they wanted a tight headshot and wanted to isolate the officer on the right. Go through a newspapers archives and you will find all manner of things done, painted directly on the print, then they would shoot a halftone neg of it and that would be used to burn a plate for printing. Now there are other tools, but still a lot of messing around.