SMITH, W. EUGENE

born Dec. 20, 1918, Wichita, Kan., U.S. died Oct. 15, 1978, Tucson, Ariz. in full William Eugene Smith, byname Gene Smith American photojournalist noted for his photo-essays. At the age of 14 Smith began to use photography as an aid to aeronautical studies, and within a year he had become a photographer on two local newspapers. He left college after one year to go to New York City, where he worked for several large magazines. In 1942 Smith became a war correspondent for Life magazine and covered many of the most important battles of the Pacific theatre, including Tarawa, Saipan, Guam, and Iwo Jima. He was critically wounded while covering the invasion of Okinawa (1945). During the next two years he underwent 32 operations. Toward the end of his painful convalescence, in 1947, he took what was to become his most famous photograph, The Walk to Paradise Garden. This view of his own children entering a forest clearing was the first photograph he took after being wounded. It concluded the landmark photographic exhibition The Family of Man, which was organized by Edward Steichen for the Museum of Modern Art in 1955. Smith returned to work for Life in 1947 and began a series of outstanding photo-essays, including the psychologically penetrating Country Doctor (1948). Another series, Spanish Village (1951), contains many of his most memorable prints, revealing the villagers' daily struggle to draw life from exhausted soil. Nurse Midwife (1951) and Man of Mercy (1954) portray two people, a backwoods midwife and Dr. Albert Schweitzer, dedicated to easing the suffering of others. In 1956 Smith began an ambitious photo-essay on the city of Pittsburgh. Almost simultaneously, he began a series of photographs of New York City street scenes taken from the window of his loft on Sixth Avenue. Part of the series was published in Life in 1958 under the title Drama Beneath a City Window. A book of his photographs, JapanChapter of Image, was published in 1963. Smith's last great photo-essay, Minamata (1975), dealt with the residents of a Japanese village who suffered poisoning and gross disfigurement from the mercury wastes of a nearby chemical company.