W. Eugene Smith American, 1918-1978 W. Eugene Smith (born in Wichita, Kansas) was a master photojournalist known for his many photo essays in Life magazine. After working as a part-time newspaper photographer while in high school, Smith studied briefly at the University of Notre Dame. He then moved to New York City in 1937, where his first job was with Newsweek. After a year at the magazine and a period of freelance work, he signed a contract with Life in 1939, but resigned two years later. His subsequent career as a war correspondent (1942-45) was interrupted after he was severely wounded by shell fire. Smith's first photograph after two years of convalescence, The Walk to Paradise Garden, became one of his most well known and was featured in the exhibition The Family of Man at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1955). From 1947-54 he was once more associated with Life, producing a number of major photographic essays: "Country Doctor" (1948), "Spanish Village" (1951), "Nurse Midwife" (1951), and "A Man of Mercy" (focusing on Dr. Albert Schweitzer, 1954). In 1954 he again resigned from Life after a disagreement over the handling of the Schweitzer essay. The following year Smith joined magnum Photos and undertook a major photographic study of the city of Pittsburgh, receiving two fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1956, 1957). In 1957 he also began work on a new project, a series of photographs taken from his studio window. Smith spent several years in Japan in the 1960s (traveling there initially to make photographs for Hitachi Limited) and returned in 1971 to work on the powerful and moving Minamata photo essay, which portrayed a small Japanese fishing village whose inhabitants were poisoned by industrial pollution (first published in Life and then as a book). Until his death in 1978, Smith continued to photograph, teach, and exhibit. M.M.