William Eugene Smith or Gene Smith (1918-1978) was an American photographer, best known for his photo essays. At the age of 14, he started in photograph, which took him into photojournalism in his local newspapers. After one year in college, he went to New York City. This is where he joined Life magazine to cover the battles in World War II. He was critically wounded there and received a total of 32 operations within a two year time frame. One of his most famous photograph was the first one he took since he was injured. That photo was of his children exiting the trees of the forest to the clearing, The Walk to Paradise Garden (1947).

Children of photographer W. Eugene Smith walking hand-in-hand in woods behind his home, in photo entitled “The Walk to Paradise Garden”

Smith published many photo essays that would set a new standard. Some of them were “Trial by Jury” (1948), “The Country Doctor” (1948), “Nurse Midwife” (1951), and “The Reign of Chemistry” (1953). There were many emotions that were shown in his work. He was showing how people experienced life, death, beauty, love, etc. However, he felt trapped with his job in Life magazine and moved on to Magnum Photo Agency in 1955. He held himself to very high standards and prolonged a simple three week project for Magnum to a three year project. Magnum eventually published his work to Smith dissatisfaction. Smith ran up huge debts from this, his health was failing, and his marriage ended. Then in 1971, he moved to Japan to record a small fishing village, Minamata, and the mercury poisoning. This was initially supposed to take only three month, but he extended it to three years. Smith published the book, Minamata, and an article, “Death-Flow from a Pipe”. The most famous photo was of two people in a bath. He had heard about the daily bath and set up the shoot for three in the afternoon.
Smith’s photos capture different sides of life. Some of happy and some can cause sadness and anger. It stirs up the emotions inside the viewer because the photos causes you to feel empathy. They wrap up a part of the person’s life in one shot. It hard not to feel anything when looking at them.