© Samuel Aranda, Oct. 15, 2011, Sanaa / Yemen

Winner of this year’s World Press Photo Award

Aranda’s winning image shows a woman holding a wounded relative in her arms, inside a mosque used as a field hospital by demonstrators against the rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, during clashes in Sanaa. Samuel Aranda was working in Yemen on assignment for The New York Times. He is represented by Corbis Images.

“I think it’s really important when you receive such an award to remember that all of this work is for the people we’re documenting,” he says. “What I would really like is for this photo to help the people of Yemen. I think it’s a country that is often forgotten.” (Samuel Aranda)

Does the winning image reference Michelangelo’s Pietà?

“There’s been discussions about connections between Samuel Aranda’s image and the Pietà,” admits jury member Nina Berman. “I was a big supporter of this image and I think it’s fantastic that Christian audiences can connect in a way that is compassionate and not prejudicial with the Muslim world,” she tells BJP. “And if they have to do it through their own Christian icons, then fine. That’s what art is for.”

  © Michelangelo (Buonarroti), 1498-1499, Pietà, St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City

For Koyo Kouoh, the founder and artistic director Raw Material Company, it’s normal that Aranda’s image would refer us to Michelangelo’s Pietà. “The image of the pieta is something imprinted in human DNA,” he says. “It is something that is always inside us. And I don’t think [it was intentional]. Maybe afterwards there is a lot of reading and interpretation of the image but I don’t think he was pushing to make that reference. He just captured a moment.”

Aranda confirms that fact to BJP. “It was not intentional. You know how it is in these situations - it was really tense and chaotic. In these situations, you just shoot photos. It is what it is. We’re just photographers. I consider myself just a worker. I just witness what is going on in front of me, and shoots photos. That’s it.”

(read the whole interview with Samuel Aranda here; read more here, here, here and here)

I wonder if there was a similar discussion about William Eugene Smiths’ photo ‘Tomoko Uemura in Her Bath’:

© William Eugene Smith, 1972, Tomoko Uemura in Her Bath, Minamata

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© William Eugene Smith, 1950s or 1960s, Thelonious Monk

From The Jazz Loft Project:

Between 1957 and 1965 W. Eugene Smith made approximately 40,000 exposures both inside the loft building at 821 Sixth Avenue, of the nocturnal jazz scene, and of the street below as seen through his fourth-floor window.

In a November 1958 letter to his friend Ansel Adams, Smith wrote: “The loft is a curious place, pinned with the notes and proof prints … with reminders … with demands. Always there is the window. It forever seduces me away from my work in this cold water flat. I breathe and smile and quicken and languish in appreciation of it, the proscenium arch with me on the third stage looking it down and up and bent along the sides and the whole audience in performance down before me, an ever changing pandemonium of delicate details and habitual rhythms.”

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William Eugene Smith - Photography made difficult / VIDEO

“W. Eugene Smith: Photography Made Difficult” is a ninety-minute documentary produced for the Public Broadcasting System’s American Masters television series. It was written by Jan Hartman and is based on the letters and journals of this internationally respected photojournalist.

The program introduces the viewer to hundreds of Mr. Smith’s photographs through a dramatic recreation of the photographer’s life. Peter Riegart portrays the artist, starting with his assignment covering the South Pacific war experiences of the 1940’s. Through his photographs for Life Magazine, Mr. Smith wanted to “carry some message against the greed, stupidity and intolerance that causes war”. If it were not for just a “simple accident of birth, the fate of a particular country of origin, we could be considered as the enemy”.

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© William Eugene Smith, 1955, ‘Dance of the Flaming Coke’

Another great exhibition in Berlin (that I unfortunately missed): ‘W. Eugene Smith – Photographs, A retrospective’ at Martin-Gropius-Bau.

Thanks to ArtBlart for these great exhibiton re/previews!

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The photograph of W. Eugene Smith I was asking for in Photo Quiz #2 may possibly be this one (used for the cover of LIFE magazine in Oct. 20, 1947 / photo essay on folk singers):

My friend Chagalov (a research-genius) came up with very credible arguments that it’s the photo mentioned in the telegram.

Possible evidence:
+ Smith mentioned a “Little Girl” in the telegram
+ “…living without contamination of prettification for photographer.”
+ the camera settings could fit (4EM, F2, NEXT SHUTTER SPEED OVER HUNDRED)
+ a situation in which the copy had to be given urgently (thus: newspaper, magazine)
+ the telegram says “Child of Song” -> the LIFE cover says: “Listening to Folk songs”

Please let me know if you have any other suggestions! Hint: The picture must have been taken between 1945 and 1948 (Western Union President: Joseph L. Egan).

THE QUESTION WAS:
Does anybody know what photograph W. Eugene Smith is writing about in this telegram?
(see Photo Quiz #2)

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PHOTO QUIZ # 2 / THE TELEGRAM

Does anybody know what photograph Smith is writing about?
Hint: The picture must have been taken between 1945 and 1948 (Western Union President: Joseph L. Egan).

Telegram from W. Eugene Smith

Check out if you were right: » Answer for photo quiz #2 «

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© William Eugene Smith, 1951, ‘Newborn Baby in Makeshift Crib near Cold Stove, South Carolina’

“Every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last.” (Charles Dickens)

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