Re: [Leica] Paradise Garden (LONG!)

["B. D. Colen" <bdcolen@earthlink.net>]

One thing that I have come to believe after spending a great deal of time with two
Gene Smith books over the past several months is that there is manipulation and
there is manipulation. Setting up a photo - particularly a "news" photo is one
thing, manipulating the tonality, feel, etc. in the darkroom is another. I see
nothing wrong with printing the scene you "saw," rather than the scene as it was
"perfectly" captured on film - i.e., Smith printed dark, because he saw dark. Most
of his images are stronger that way. So?

I assume, based on everything I've read, that he "set up" Paradise Garden...so
what? It's a picture of a couple of his kids in the woods, fer God's sake, not Ruby
shooting Oswald. It's photography. It's art. It's a powerful image. Period.

I certainly agree with Eric's "that was then, this is now" philosophy (which I have
paraphrased) in terms of Smith's setting up images, and I think that while there
are certainly some universal moral and ethical standards, there are virtually none
when it comes to art - or journalism.

Smith was a drug addict. Smith was a drunk. Smith had a major mother problem. Smith
was one of the great geniuses of photography. If any of the first three are
relevant in terms of the fourth, they are only relevant in so far as they
contributed to the fourth.

IMHO

B. D.

Tina Manley wrote:

> 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/