The Big Book by W. Eugene Smith, Hardcover, 9780292754683 | Buy online at The Nile
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The Big Book

Volumes One and Two

Author: W. Eugene Smith  

These slipcased volumes present a facsimile of the unpublished magnum opus of one of the twentieth century’s greatest photographers—an ambitious, ahead-of-its-time photo-essay that reveals W. Eugene Smith as a major progenitor of the photobook genre.

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Summary

These slipcased volumes present a facsimile of the unpublished magnum opus of one of the twentieth century’s greatest photographers—an ambitious, ahead-of-its-time photo-essay that reveals W. Eugene Smith as a major progenitor of the photobook genre.

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Description

W. Eugene Smith, an icon in the field of twentieth-century photography, is best known as the master of the humanistic photographic essay. Smith's most expressive and frequently reproduced images-World War II combat, the country doctor and nurse-midwife, Pittsburgh, Albert Schweitzer in Africa, rural Spanish villagers, and the mentally ill in Haiti-have altered our perception and understanding of the world.

In 1959, Smith became obsessed with creating an extended photo-essay that he called "The Big Book," a complex retrospective of his work that would reflect his philosophy of art and critique of the world. Smith's layout grouped photographs out of context and chronological order to form a series of connected "visual chapters and subchapters" that were intended to have a Joycean or Faulknerian literary quality. After three years of intense labor, Smith completed two handmade folio-sized maquettes to send to publishers. With 380 pages and 450 images, The Big Book was universally rejected as unviable and non-commercial, and it was never published.

Now, five decades later, a facsimile of W. Eugene Smith's The Big Book, which is part of the Smith Archive at the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) at the University of Arizona, is in print for the first time. Accompanying the facsimile is a supporting volume with a foreword by Dr. Katherine Martinez, Director of CCP; an introduction by William S. Johnson, who arranged Smith's archive at CCP; an essay by the renowned Swiss critic John Berger; notes on the Smith Collection at CCP by archivist Leslie Squyres and Jennifer Jae Gutierrez; "The Walk to Paradise Garden," by W. Eugene Smith; and an appendix that maps Smith's complete layout with titles, dates, and reproductions of each image from original prints. The Big Book is an essential primary source document for the study of both the history of photography and the history of the photobook. This set, in slipcase, will likely be the most comprehensive catalogue of W. Eugene Smith's work ever published.

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Critic Reviews

“Gene Smith taught me how to print when I was young. I had always thought he was an interesting journalist photographer, and a kind man. Now I know, to my surprise, that he was a great book artist way ahead of his time.”

"At first, the decision to reproduce the book down to the poor-quality images seems like a questionable choice - likely only to attract photo geeks. But over time the visual presentation grows on the reader and emphasizes the cohesive nature of Mr. Smith's book as a whole as opposed to a collection of individual photos."--NYT Lens Blog "This collection is a retrospective of the work of 20th-century documentary photographer W. Eugene Smith - a project Smith began in 1959, but wouldn't see come to fruition before he died in 1978. Smith was known for the photo essay, one in particular being the 1948 LIFE magazine essay "Country Doctor," in which he spent three weeks tracing the life of small-town Colorado physician Ernest Ceriani." - Kirsten Akens, Colorado Springs Independent ""-Photo Eye Blog "War, death, birth, childhood, work, daily life, monumental events, race, racism, civil rights, it's all in there. Taken as a whole, it seems impossible to come away from The Big Book without a certainty that Smith was the most dedicated of humanists. That he was driven to undertake such a massive effort is, in and of itself, a major indication of Smith's drive to push the photographic language forward." - Photoblog "I think that reading the two volume maquette is similar in experience to a visit to Florence and viewing one of Michelangelo's partially complete sculptures, a raw and incomplete work, gaining a glimpse into the working of a very creative mind." - Emaho Magazine "Photojournalist W. Eugene Smith brought worldwide attention to social injustice and the disadvantaged with his intimate and provocative candid pictures. He deserves his reputation as the pioneer of humanistic photojournalism [...] In 1959, he began assembling a retrospective on what was then his life's work, giving it the title "The Big Book," also known as "The Walk to Paradise" and "The Total Book." He labored nearly three years on a mock-up to submit to publishers. It was a Herculean task. Massive in scale, it required two folio-sized volumes with 380 pages and 450 images. The structure and layout were unconventional and challenging. The book was universally rejected as commercially unviable and was never published - until now.[...] No doubt it will provide rich mining and discourse for academia, curators and steadfast photography buffs eager to ingest and examine this comprehensive study of Smith's technique, its historical context and ultimately his legacy. [...] Seeing "The Big Book" finally come to life is fascinating and remarkable." - Truth Dig "...The Center for Creative Photography and University of Texas Press made a bold, complicated decision to publish a facsimile of the surviving original, rather than redesigning a new book based on it, by inserting pristine reproductions of Smith's images in place of the maquette's Agfa Copyrapid reproductions (essentially fifty-year-old photocopies of Smith's original prints) that weren't meant for publication. ... You can hear cynics decrying, I want to see Smith's vaunted printing technique represented here, not glorified photocopies, and certainly not for $185! But the right decision was made." - The Paris Review

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About the Author

Born in Wichita, Kansas, in 1918, W. Eugene Smith was a combat photographer during World War II, and worked for" Life "magazine during the 1940s and 1950s, producing more than fifty photo-essays. In the early 1970s, he photographed in Minamata, Japan, a small village affected by industrial mercury poisoning.
Jim Hughes, former editor of" Camera Arts," the "Photography Annual" and" Camera 35," is the author of "W. Eugene Smith: Shadow & Substance,"" Ernst Haas in Black and White," and "The Birth of a Century."

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More on this Book

W. Eugene Smith, an icon in the field of twentieth-century photography, is best known as the master of the humanistic photographic essay. Smith's most expressive and frequently reproduced images--World War II combat, the country doctor and nurse-midwife, Pittsburgh, Albert Schweitzer in Africa, rural Spanish villagers, and the mentally ill in Haiti--have altered our perception and understanding of the world. In 1959, Smith became obsessed with creating an extended photo-essay that he called "The Big Book," a complex retrospective of his work that would reflect his philosophy of art and critique of the world. Smith's layout grouped photographs out of context and chronological order to form a series of connected "visual chapters and subchapters" that were intended to have a Joycean or Faulknerian literary quality. After three years of intense labor, Smith completed two handmade folio-sized maquettes to send to publishers. With 380 pages and 450 images, The Big Book was universally rejected as unviable and non-commercial, and it was never published. Now, five decades later, a facsimile of W. Eugene Smith's The Big Book, which is part of the Smith Archive at the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) at the University of Arizona, is in print for the first time. Accompanying the facsimile is a supporting volume with a foreword by Dr. Katherine Martinez, Director of CCP; an introduction by William S. Johnson, who arranged Smith's archive at CCP; an essay by the renowned Swiss critic John Berger; notes on the Smith Collection at CCP by archivist Leslie Squyres and Jennifer Jae Gutierrez; "The Walk to Paradise Garden," by W. Eugene Smith; and an appendix that maps Smith's complete layout with titles, dates, and reproductions of each image from original prints. The Big Book is an essential primary source document for the study of both the history of photography and the history of the photobook. This set, in slipcase, will likely be the most comprehensive catalogue of W. Eugene Smith's work ever published.

Read more

Product Details

Publisher
University of Texas Press
Published
15th October 2013
Pages
341
ISBN
9780292754683

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