Re: [Leica] I missed it.

[Eric Welch <ewelch@ponyexpress.net>]

At 12:40 PM 4/2/99 +0200, you wrote:
>I take it you were with Gene Smith at the time and saw this with your own
>eyes. What really intrigues me is what possible reason you might have to
>smear his name and reputation at this time?

Claes,

This is a well known fact. If you know Gene Smith so well, why haven't you 
read the definitive biography by Jim Hughes? Gene Smith was very open with 
admitting this. He told the story himself.

>Since you were there I have no reason to doubt your disclosure. But my own
>personal impression of W.Eugene Smith is somehow different. Never have I met
>a more honest, uncompromising and compassionate photojournalist. The Truth
>was very essential to Gene! And it was his resentless search for the truth
>that eventually killed him

Actually, it was at least in part abuse of alcohol and amphetamines that 
killed him. Although it was a fall in a convenience store while picking up 
some cat food that finally killed him.

 I don't hold him accountable like I would more contemporary 
photojournalists for his staging of some photos. Ethics in this profession 
are quite new. And even Gene Smith himself admitted that the kind of thing 
he used to do was not good. He is still highly respected in the profession, 
even though he did things that would not be acceptable now, and even his 
own words confirm that.

His argument in the "old days" was that he was searching for truth, and 
that by making a picture, rather than just recording it, he was finding a 
"higher truth." And that literalists were only recording surfaces. That was 
during the time he cut a piece of paper out in the shape of a human arm and 
saw and put it in the corner of the picture that is on the cover of his 
book, ironically, "Let Truth be the Prejudice." Jim Hughes, his biographer, 
found that negative, which Smith said had been damaged, and found it to be 
quite perfect.

After all is said and done, he was one of the greatest photojournalists who 
ever lived. But he had his faults like anyone. And being such a pioneer of 
the genre, I'm willing to cut him some slack that I wouldn't my 
contemporaries.

I'm sure he's relieved... :-)

Eric Welch
St. Joseph, MO
http://www.ponyexpress.net/~ewelch

    The strength and power of despotism
     consists wholly in the fear of resistance.
               -- Thomas Paine