Great Black and White Photographers PART 2

W. Eugene Smith      

William Eugene Smith, December 30, 1918, Wichita, Kansas – October 15, 1978, Tucson, Arizona. He was an American photojournalist known for his refusal to compromise professional standards and his brutally vivid World War II photographs. 

  Smith graduated from Wichita North High School in 1936. He began his career by taking pictures for two local newspapers, The Wichita Eagle  and the Beacon. He moved to New York City and began work for Newsweek and became known for his incessant perfectionism and thorny personality. Smith was fired from Newsweek for refusing to use medium format cameras and joined Life Magazine in 1939. He soon resigned from Life, too. In 1942 he was wounded while photographing battle conditions in the Pacific theater of World War II. 

 W. Eugene Smith covered many of the important battles of the Pacific Theater. He produced a number of photo essays for Life and other magazines. His most famous picture, "The Walk to Paradise Garden" 1947, showing his own children entering a forest clearing, concluded the landmark photographic exhibition The Family of Man.