Eugene Smith Essay

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Tomoko Uemura in Her Bath is a photograph taken by the American photojournalist W. Eugene Smith in 1971. Many reviewers describe Tomoko as Smith's greatest work. The black and white photo depicts a mother cradling her deformed, naked daughter in a traditional Japanese bathing chamber. The mother, Ryoko Uemura, agreed to pose the startlingly intimate photograph with Smith to illustrate the terrible effects of Minamata disease (a type of poisoning) on the body and mind of her daughter Tomoko. After publication, the photo became world famous, significantly raising the international awarness of Minamata disease and the struggle of the victims for recognition . At the wishes of Tomoko Uemura's family, the photograph was withdrawn from any more publication in 1997, 20 years after Tomoko's death. In class I picked up plaety of books buy various photographers, but out of all of them, the one by Eugene Smith caught my attention . The images in the book all tell me a story and always has some ssort of feeling or emotion behind it. None of them are boring to me, they always make me think or take a second look. And each time I look at the pictures again something new comes to my mind . For example, each time I look at the photo of the little boy climbing the street sign, many different thoughts come to mind. Sometimes I think he is climbing to escape from something down below or maybe hes just playing around and looking at something. I don’t know , but im sure it has meaning behind it. Eugenes work greatly influences my style of photography. When Im taking pictures I actually plan and have an idea of what I want to come out instead of taking pictures of unnecessary things. I also am inspired to take much more unique photos, pictures of things and events people don’t usually see. I’d like to have more emotion and more stories behind my photos so I can have the viewers

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