[Leica] Lost Pictures of Eugene Smith

[passaro.vince at gmail.com (Vince Passaro)]

George,

You didn't miss that much -- an amusing Welshman discovers that Gene Smith
took a lot of pictures there for Life Mag when sent to cover the elections
of 1950, in which Henry Luce of Time Life had some emotional stake in seeing
Labour lose (they didn't).  Smith went and photographed the miners. The
documentarian calls the pictures "lost" because Life only published three of
them, but off he trundled to the Center for Creative Photography at Tucson
and finds the boxes in the Gene Smith archive marked Britain 1950, and
indeed there it all was where it was supposed to have been, so it's not
clear why they're "lost". There are also twenty pages of these photos in the
Abrams book W Eugene Smith Photographs 1934-1975, and other pages in other
catalogues that followed major exhibitions. People who know Smith's work
well know all about these pictures.

Anyway the best part of the wee documentary by the roly-poly Welshman is
when he digs up the last surviving member of the trio of miners whose
blackened faces, set against the hills of South Wales, formed one of Smith's
iconic images.  This fellow jovially explained how Smith encountered them on
the way home from work and asked if he could shoot their picture: then told
them where to stand and where to look. Much about how Britain was faring in
1950; not much enlightening at all about Smith. For example, it would have
been typical that Life didn't publish what Smith wanted them to in the way
he wanted them to; that's why he eventually quit the place, leading to his
artistic freedom (Pittsburgh project, Jazz Loft project, and Minimata) but
also his financial ruin.

If there are other Smith fans out there, I have an essay coming out in
Harper's magazine later this year on him; when it's available I'll post it
on the LUG.

Vince P