[Leica] Lost Pictures of Eugene Smith

[imagist3 at mac.com (George Lottermoser)]

Thanks for the synopsis Vince.
While it may not have been "much"
these tiny vignettes do shake the webs off our memories.

Yes.
Definitely let us know when your essay becomes available.

Regards,
George Lottermoser
george at imagist.com
http://www.imagist.com
http://www.imagist.com/blog
http://www.linkedin.com/in/imagist

On Jan 26, 2010, at 4:05 PM, Vince Passaro wrote:

> George,
>
> You didn't miss that much -- an amusing Welshman discovers that  
> Gene Smith
> took a lot of pictures there for Life Mag when sent to cover the  
> elections
> of 1950, in which Henry Luce of Time Life had some emotional stake  
> in seeing
> Labour lose (they didn't).  Smith went and photographed the miners.  
> The
> documentarian calls the pictures "lost" because Life only published  
> three of
> them, but off he trundled to the Center for Creative Photography at  
> Tucson
> and finds the boxes in the Gene Smith archive marked Britain 1950, and
> indeed there it all was where it was supposed to have been, so it's  
> not
> clear why they're "lost". There are also twenty pages of these  
> photos in the
> Abrams book W Eugene Smith Photographs 1934-1975, and other pages  
> in other
> catalogues that followed major exhibitions. People who know Smith's  
> work
> well know all about these pictures.
>
> Anyway the best part of the wee documentary by the roly-poly  
> Welshman is
> when he digs up the last surviving member of the trio of miners whose
> blackened faces, set against the hills of South Wales, formed one  
> of Smith's
> iconic images.  This fellow jovially explained how Smith  
> encountered them on
> the way home from work and asked if he could shoot their picture:  
> then told
> them where to stand and where to look. Much about how Britain was  
> faring in
> 1950; not much enlightening at all about Smith. For example, it  
> would have
> been typical that Life didn't publish what Smith wanted them to in  
> the way
> he wanted them to; that's why he eventually quit the place, leading  
> to his
> artistic freedom (Pittsburgh project, Jazz Loft project, and  
> Minimata) but
> also his financial ruin.
>
> If there are other Smith fans out there, I have an essay coming out in
> Harper's magazine later this year on him; when it's available I'll  
> post it
> on the LUG.
>
> Vince P
>
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