W. Eugene Smith
[Photographer, b. 1918, Wichita, Kansas, d. 1978, Tucson, Arizona.]
The journalistic photographer can have no other than a personal approach; and it is impossible for him to be completely objective. Honest—yes. Objective—no.
I can’t stand these damn shows on museum walls with neat little frames, where you look at the images as if they were pieces of art. I want them to be pieces of life.
It’s not a matter of looking, it’s a matter of seeing.
(Quoted by photographer Edouard Boubat)
The first word I would remove from the folklore of journalism is the word objective.
With considerable soul searching, that to the utmost of my ability, I have let truth be the prejudice.
I didn’t write the rules. Why would I follow them?
I try to take what voice I have and I give it to those who don’t have one at all.
In printing the photographs of the white-gowned Klan members I ran into considerable difficulty. There were several with uncovered faces and these faces were vividly dark in comparison to the white-white of the gowns that it was almost impossible to keep them from appearing black. I am terribly sorry.
(Apology to his editor about images from his 1951 photo essay on the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina.)
