Steel Plant. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, W. Eugene Smith, 1965

W Eugene Smith exists as a sort of caricature of a photographer, throughout his career he maintained an obsession with recording everything in pursuit of achieving the perfect image, constantly thinking of the photographic practice in terms of a series Smith composed his work in the same vein of how a playwright would approach theatre. Drawing a sense of identity from earlier contemporaries such as Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange and finding compromise between "straight photography" and conceptually interesting images. Eugene Smith's life could be defined by his ego first and foremost though I don't necessarily view that in an entirely negative light. To be an artist there is a need for ego as a means of supporting yourself, especially for someone like Smith who as a photojournalist became noturious for his difficulty to work with publishers. He had to constantly be in control of how his work was being percieved. After parting ways with Life magazine due to creative differences in the framing of narratives and selection of published prints Smith became engaged with the Magnum Photo group where he work towards one of the most extensive projects in his career as a photojournalist producing over 13,000 photographs with the intention of capturing daily life of the city of Pittsburgh. This is one of my favorite series of work that Smith created though ironically it exists as one of his least succesful projects, returning to disccusions about obsession the scope of Smith's intention largely undermined his ability to put an end to the project, with no means to sort and create consistent dialouge between the photos into a book Magnum was forced to end Smith's contract, Smith would be essentially blacklisted from working for many publications until the Minimata series later in his career. We're taught as artists to constantly maintain the balance between appeasement of peers and our own obligations to find meaning in the work we produce. This compromise often exists at the disenrichment of either party. Smith's dedication to photography as in a very rudimentary sense, his way of interacting with the world existed largely to his undoing. Of course he created wonderful work but it takes so much trust in yourself to surpass the "acceptable practices". (Week 11)