W. Eugene Smith at Robert Mann

If you're infatuated with large-scale C-prints and can't understand the fogeys who wax rhapsodic about the good ol' days of modest-sized black-and-white, the W. Eugene Smith show currently at Robert Mann Gallery might clue you in to to the value of old-school photography. This mini- retrospective of Smith's work covers his photojournalism, corporate and personal projects.

Smith gained prominence while covering the Pacific Theater during World War II for Life magazine. The show starts with several of his war-time photographs. I have previously commented on Smith's approach to war photography in relation to modern photography in Iraq. This work, and his other photographs, are highly cinemagraphic in terms of composition and lighting, a feature that was perhaps more common at the time while modern photojournalism strives for a sense of objectivity. Smith incorporated his darkroom processing as part of the full journalistic and artistic expression in the photographic print, while today even moderate Photoshop manipulation beyond the straight capture is considered taboo. (How, or if, Smith performed darkroom work while with active combat units is unclear to me. If you can shed light on this, please elaborate in the comments. My guess is he included detailed processing instructions in his communication with Life and other magazines.)

Spanish Wake, 1951 by W. Eugene Smith

All of Smith's work has a deeply human element to it, seen promimently in his post-war work for the magazine, such as "Spanish Village", "Nurse Midwife" and "Country Doctor". Portions of these essays are included in the show. Each was achieved by becoming "embedded" with the subjects, understanding their challenges, desires, hopes, and defeats. (One of the reasons the US military's embedding program has been rejected by many modern journalists is that, by nature and intent, it leads to an empathy for the soldiers a reporter accompanies. This was once viewed as a positive result.)

Smith believed in the primacy of the photographer as the author of the photographic essay, from capture to printing to published layout. This perfectionist urge for control was ill-suited to a magazine publishing schedule and his inflexiblity led to intractable conflict with the Life editors. Eventually the relationship became untenable to him and he left Life for the Magnum photo agency. One of the outgrowths of his independent streak was "Dream Street", a 1955-56 portrait of Pittsburgh consisting of over 6000 work prints and 1200 final prints (imagine the number of negatives.) ICP was able to display a mere 193 prints in their '02 exhibition on the project. A selection is shown at Mann. (Popular Photography published 38 pages worth of the series in 1959, which shows what a different sort of publication it's become, unfortunately.)

Through Dec 23 at Robert Mann Gallery
210 11th Ave
(212) 989-7600