Remembering W. Eugene Smith on his birthday 🎂
Self-portrait, 1954
"I feel Gene's photographs reflect a great turmoil. They are captured between the shirt and the skin; this camera, anchored in the heart, moves me by its integrity."
- Henri Cartier-Bresson
On W. Eugene Smith's birthday, my favourite portraits.
Heitor Villa-Lobos, New York, 1945
No one captured Villa's geniality, openness & enthusiasm better than Gene Smith.
On W. Eugene Smith's birthday, my favourite portraits.
Paul Robeson, 1951
From Smith's series "Recording Artists", which also includes jazz & pop musicians.
On W. Eugene Smith's birthday, my favourite portraits.
Charles Munch & Yehudi Menuhin, 1951
On W. Eugene Smith's birthday, my favourite portraits.
Gregor Piatigorsky listening to playback of his Brahms sonatas, 1947
On W. Eugene Smith's birthday, my favourite portraits.
Thelonious Monk, c. 1965
On W. Eugene Smith's birthday, my favourite portraits.
Charles Ives, 1945
On W. Eugene Smith's birthday, my favourite portraits.
Rudolf Serkin, c. 1947
On W. Eugene Smith's birthday, my favourite portraits.
Albert Schweitzer, Aspen, 1949
What a remarkable photograph!
On W. Eugene Smith's birthday, my favourite portraits.
Gregory Peck, 1950
On W. Eugene Smith's birthday, my favourite portraits.
Tennessee Williams, c. 1947
On W. Eugene Smith's birthday, my favourite portraits.
(The right place at the right time!)
Two great photographers by Elliott Erwitt, New York, 1955
W. Eugene Smith & Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bresson
W. Eugene Smith with one of his many cats in his New York studio, 1960
Consuelo Kanaga
W. Eugene Smith & Aileen, 1974
W. Eugene Smith, one of Life magazine's great photo correspondents, was a combat photographer in WWII. He was wounded taking this shot at Iwo Jima in 1945.
"Though he’d come up with a lyrical series title, 'As from my window I sometimes glance', this was a misleading description of what was going on: Eugene Smith was not sometimes glancing, he was looking compulsively, all the time, taking more & more pictures."
- Geoff Dyer
W. Eugene Smith
Nun waiting for the Andrea Doria, 1956
1,660 passengers and crew were rescued & survived, though 46 people on the ship died as a direct consequence of the collision with the Stockholm.
W. Eugene Smith
A pedestrian accident, 1958
"On the outside is Sixth Avenue, the flower district, with my window as proscenium arch, the street is staged with all the humors of man, and of weather too."
Arnold Newman's great portrait of W. Eugene Smith
New York, 1977.
This shot, with Gene's Loft representing the complex muddle of his genius, is certainly a fine example of the "environmental portrait."
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