W. Eugene Smith & The Power of Visual Journalism
W. Eugene Smith invented the concept of visual storytelling
W. Eugene Smith was a stills photographer for Life Magazine.
He pretty much invented the concept of visual storytelling, conveying the power of a story primarily by photographs, with the text to follow.
Working for Henry R. Luce, the founder of Time and Life magazines, he pioneered the format that would become the basis of Life Magazine — pictures first.
In the boot camps and in the stations with whom we work, Smith’s concept is our model for how to tell compelling stories in video.
But Smith also demonstrated the enormous power of visual storytelling to change lives and the world.
In 1970, he and his wife Aileen rented a small cottage in the Japanese fishing village of Minimata. Aside from being a fishing village, Minimata was also the home of Chisso, a factory discharging heavy mercury industrial waste into the bay.
The effects of the mercury poisoning were devastating for the residents of Minimata, causing terrible birth defects and neurological damage. But telling this story to the world also endangered the lives of the employees of Chisso, and while photographing the story, both Smith and Aileen were threatened and badly beaten by union thugs.
The book was published in 1975 as Minamata, Words and Photographs by W. Eugene Smith and Aileen M. Smith. Its centerpiece photograph and one of his most famous works, Tomoko and Mother in the Bath, taken in December 1971, drew worldwide attention to the effects of Minamata disease. The photograph shows a mother cradling her severely deformed daughter in a traditional Japanese bath house. The photograph was the centerpiece of a Minamata disease exhibition in Tokyo in 1974.
The book brought worldwide attention to the problems of industrial pollution. Chisso was forced to pay $86 million in compensation to the people of Minimata. In 2020, the film Minamata dramatized the story of Smith’s documentation of the pollution and the ensuing protests and campaign in Japan. Johnny Depp played W. Eugene Smith, and Minami played Aileen. For us, and the methods we teach for video, Smith is our model in both shooting style and the potential power of visual journalism to change the world.