Re: [Leica] Paradise Garden (LONG!)

[Tina Manley <images@InfoAve.Net>]

I don't have any idea what happened to that last post.  I'll try again.

This is what Gene Smith wrote about Paradise Garden:

"The children were scampering every which direction. I let them lead where they
would, doing my best not to become lost from them; trying to follow without
disrupting their thinking and actions - as if I were not there. They approached
a clearing roughly arched by the trees, and I became acutely sensitive to the
lines forming the scene and to the bright shower of light pouring into the
opening and spilling down the path towards us. Pat saw something in the
clearing, he grasped Juanita by the hand and they hurried forward. I dropped a
little further behind the engrossed children, then stopped. Painfully, I
struggled - almost into panic - with the mechanical inequities of the camera...
and as the children stepped in space to complete my foreseen composition, I
pressed the camera release to retain the image of that instant - to hold secure
on film the vision of this minute fraction of time floating within eternity. A
printable reproduction of a mental realization.
The reaction was immediate. I knew the photograph, though not perfect, and
however unimportant to the world, had been held. Shock waves of feeling
released through me, breaking damply out of my flesh. Mist hazed my eyes, I
began to tremble, nearly sick; I turned away that my children who had continued
on might not turn and discover I was crying - crying out from the agony of my
relief..."

 From W. Eugene Smith, Shadow & Substance by Jim Hughes

However, Hughes also says:

"The nearly nine years that passed between the day's unfolding and his finally
setting it down for history had no doubt colored Gene's view of the event. He
wrote, for instance, that this photograph was made two years after his injury,
when, in fact, only a year had elapsed. He also wrote, as he frequently
declared in public, that the exposure was his first since the war, but at least
one close friend from the time has testified otherwise: Allan Sloane, "Gene
created his own legends. He created the legend that "The Walk to Paradise
Garden" was God's blessing, and his signal to him that the light at the end of
his long tunnel had broken through. that here was the future. That he grabbed
his camera and shot it. No way. It never happened. He had taken many and many a
roll before that. He said otherwise, but it is something that I know from him."

If you are interested in W. Eugene Smith, this is a very thorough book - 600
pages!

Leically,

Tina

Tina Manley, ASMP
http://www.tinamanley.com/