W. Eugene Smith, Photography Made Difficult

"Photo is a small voice, at best, but sometimes - just sometimes - one photograph or a group of them can lure our senses into awareness. Much depends upon the viewer; in some, photographs can summon enough emotion to be a catalyst to thought." -Eugene Smith

We watched "W. Eugene Smith: Photography Made Difficult." As Rita promised, the acting by Peter Riegert was cheesy. (I actually thought that they could have just used voice overs and not had *any* of the cheesy acting and it would have been a better movie.) But I loved much of what was said in the movie. And like the 'nerd' that I am, I took notes so that I could remember the nuggets of wisdom.

Quotes from the movie:

• "I photographed the war to comment on greed and stupidity." -Smith
• "human lumps of fright" -a description of Japanese civilians during WWII driven out from hiding

• "My people could be these people... an accident of birth and home."
• "He was close to a breakdown most of the time."

• "He was always looking for an imminent truth."
  
• "Let ideas come from the subject itself... Try to learn what makes them tick."
• "They didn't understand the time it takes to learn a subject." -Smith's conflict with LIFE over his process
• "I was careful to take only two pictures." Smith describing his participation in a wake in Deleitosa, Spain. Until today, I didn't know who made this picture, but I was familiar with it (and impacted by it).

• Side thought: What about doing a project on the Muslim experience in Brussels, or the immigrant issue in the EU?
• "How I hate strife." So ironic, considering Smith seemed to cause it all the time, because he only thought about himself.
• "Following me around, night and day. I got used to it, I got up and did what I had to do." Maude Callen, a nurse midwife in the American South
• "I want to do something to take away the guns of the bigoted."
• "A superficial story because of its thinness."
• "Is honest journalism a fact or ideal or figure of speech?"
• "give the essense of the city"
• "He was a passionate man who overdid it."
• "I needed 50 pictures, he gave me 10K." Stefan Lorant, regarding the assignment for his book, Pittsburgh: Story of an American City
• "Pittsburgh was... unfocused." Stefan Lorant

"He had to live with his soul." How people excused Smith behavior, like abandoning his wife and small children so that he could work on his project on Pittsburgh
"An epic - so huge that it was bound to fail." Thoughts on Smith's project on the City of Pittsburgh, which he was able to finally organize after 4 years in a spread in Popular Photography
"His work was the most important thing in his life."
"delicate details and habitual rhythms"
"I regret the fact that I cannot slip quietly through life without friction." Again, ironic to me, considering his behavior - like it's not *his* fault but everyone else's
"I am interested in shaking a man's heart."
"Pain itself is a dramatic element."
"They saw that we were working very hard and were dedicated." Smith's wife, Aileen M. Smith, about their work amongst the villagers of Minamata, who were poisoned by mercury

• "For the mother, it was her telling the world about her child." Aileen M. Smith

And finally, a nugget of wisdom from Rita: "The pictures in your mind can get in the way of seeing what's happening in front of you."