A BIG book

By printing Smith’s book as he wished for his images and himself to be seen, the Archive allows us unfettered access to a precious document in the history of photography. The result however, a replica of the faded images on yellowing pages, can be incredibly challenging to read, like trying to recognise an old schoolmate from the back of his head. Yet this is, without a doubt, an excellent technical reproduction: the cover of each of the two volumes bears a print of the stained and yellowed original cover, complete with creases, tears, and handwritten lettering. Similarly, the American photographer W. Eugene Smith (1918-1978), an icon of twentieth-century photography, created a conceptual book of his images at the beginning of the 1960s, intended to serve as retrospective sum of his work as well as a reflection of his life philosophies. And though you’ve likely seen much of Smith’s work before, you couldn’t have seen his photo book manifesto before... because it was never published.