W EUGENE SMITH (1918 1978) The Walk to Paradise Garden

Sale 2489 - Lot 154

Price Realized: $ 47,500

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 25,000 - $ 35,000

W. EUGENE SMITH (1918-1978)
The Walk to Paradise Garden. Silver print, the image measuring 15 1/2x13 inches (39.4x33 cm.), the black exhibition mount 20x16 inches (50.8x40.6 cm.), with Smith's signature, with a stylus, on print recto, and with his W. Eugene Smith, 821 Avenue of the Americas, New York 1, N.Y. TEL. 212 LA 4-6935 hand stamp and a reproduction hand stamp, on mount verso. 1948; printed late 1950s-early 60s

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Additional Details

Acquired from Sotheby's New York, April 6, 2000, lot 204; to a Private Collector.

During the post-World War II period, when Smith was convalescing at home from serious wounds he suffered in Japan, he took many photographs of his children, including this one of his daughter and son. Interestingly, though Smith identified as a photojournalist and story teller, his biographer William Johnson writes that this photograph was employed in various advertising campaigns. The image appeared in "large-scale advertising campaigns by the Ford Motor Company in 1952, Mutual of New York Insurance Company in 1956, and the International Ladies Garment Workers Union in 1963 and 1967. In 1955, Edward Steichen selected it as the final print in The Family of Man exhibition and book."