Freelance Photographer For Life example essay topic

W. Eugene Smith W. Eugene Smith, one of America's most famous photojournalists for more than three decades, was highly respected for his compassionate images and uncompromising positions concerning craftsmanship and the social responsibilities of the photographer. In the early 1970's, Smith advocated the photographer's right to direct editorial control over the layout of images, captions, and text for publication and exhibition. He was known to study his subjects in painstaking detail before shooting a single frame. He wrote, "I am constantly torn between the attitude of the conscientious journalist who is a recorder and interpreter of the facts and of the creative artist who often is necessarily at poetic odds with the literal facts". Smith was born and educated in Wichita, Kansas, where he attended Catholic elementary and high schools from 1924 to 1935.

After making his first photographs between 1933 and 1935, encouraged by Wichita press photographer Frank Noel, Smith contributed occasional photographs to local newspapers. His earliest admiration was for the work of Martin Munkacsi. The distortion in newspaper accounts of his father's suicide left Smith with lasting doubts concerning the role and standards of American journalism. He resolved to pursue photojournalism, but to apply the highest standards to his own practice. Smith studied photography on a scholarship to the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, in 1936-1937. The following year he became a Newsweek staff photographer in New York.

In 1938-1939 he worked as a freelance photographer for the Black Star Agency, publishing photographs in Life, Collier's, Harper's Bazaar, and other periodicals before becoming a staff photographer with Life from 1939 to 1941. From 1942 to 1944 Smith was a war correspondent in the Pacific theater for Popular Photography and other Ziff-Davis publications. In 1944 he returned to Life as a correspondent photographer. Smith was badly wounded at Okinawa in 1945. After a long recuperation he worked for Life between 1947 and 1954. His first photograph upon his recovery was one of his most famous: "A Walk To Paradise Garden", an image of his two children, which was the final photograph in The Family of Man exhibition and book.

Working for Life, Smith published many significant stories, including "The Country Doctor,"Nurse Midwife,' "Spanish Village", and a profile of Albert Schweitzer as a medical missionary to lepers in Africa. Smith resigned from Life and became a member of Magnum Photo Agency in 1955. During the next three years he contributed photo essays to Life, Sports Illustrated, Popular Photography, and other periodicals, including a major photographic documentation of the city of Pittsburgh. In 1956 he was commissioned by the American Institute of Architects to photograph contemporary American architecture in color. From 1959 to 1977 Smith worked as a freelance photographer for Life, Hitachi Company, and other clients. His last major story, concerning the mercury poisoning of the fishing village of Minamatal Japan, was completed in the early 1970's and contained several of his most moving images.

Smith died in 1978.