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

Sale 2443 - Lot 85

Price Realized: $ 30,000

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

Estimate: $ 20,000 - $ 30,000

W. EUGENE SMITH (1918-1978)
The Walk to Paradise Garden. Silver print, the image measuring 15 1/2x13 1/2 inches (39.4x34.3 cm.), the mount 20x16 inches (50.8x40.6 cm.), with Smith's signature, with a stylus, on print recto, and with his hand stamp W. Eugene Smith, photographer - photographic journalist, 621 Avenue of the Americas, New York 1, N.Y., and a reproduction hand stamp, on mount verso. 1948; printed late 1950s-early 60s

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From the Photographer to John Emmet Hughes, a friend and colleague at LIFE Magazine, who gifted the print to his wife on the occasion of their wedding, in 1968.

The legendary photojournalist W. Eugene Smith made a name for himself as a WWII combat photographer for LIFE Magazine. During the invasion of Okinawa on May 22, 1945, he was hit in the face by hand granade fragments, which entered his cheek, just below the eye. Interviewed in the hospital, he remarked, 'I forgot to duck but I got a wonderful shot of those who did . . . my policy of standing up when the others are down finally caught up with me.'

The physical and psychological toll of the injury on Smith and his family were enormous. Nearly three years and thirty operations later, he was unsure whether or not he could return to his profession. 'The day I again tried for the first time to make a photograph I could barely load the roll of film into the camera. Yet I was determined that the first photograph would be a contrast to the war photographs and that it would speak an affirmation of life. Thus I took a picture of two children. My children.'

A quintessential '50s image, the photograph immediately assumed iconic status and was the final picture in Edward Steichen's enormously popular exhibition "The Family of Man," at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1955.