Daphne Srinivasan, Etherton Gallery, Tucson: This portrait of W. Eugene Smith standing in front of his portrait of Tomoko Uemura in her bath by photographer Takeshi Ishikawa, is significant because it encapsulates the Etherton Gallery AIPAD 2018 exhibition program. The gallery is celebrating W. Eugene Smith’s 100th Birthday (and the 40th anniversary of his death) by mounting a one-man exhibition of his work at AIPAD. All photographs are from the Takeshi Ishikawa Archive of W. Eugene Smith Photographs. In 1971, while Smith was in the process of preparing to travel his retrospective exhibition, Let Truth Be the Prejudice, to Japan he learned about a controversy involving industrial pollution in Minamata, a small fishing village in southeastern Japan. Beginning in the 1950s, thousands of people began to experience severe illnesses as a result of eating fish that had been contaminated with industrial waste that had been dumped in the bay by Chisso Corporation. The illnesses included brain damage, paralysis, convulsions and terrible birth defects, Not long after Smith’s arrival in Japan, he met Takeshi Ishikawa, a recent graduate of Tokyo Visual Arts, on the street in Tokyo. Ishikawa went on to work closely with Smith and his wife and collaborator Aileen Sprague Smith in Minamata from 1971-1974. What was supposed to be a three-month project, turned into a three-year commitment, in which Smith lived and photographed in Minamata. Smith was badly beaten by Chisso’s corporate thugs and never really recovered. Four years after leaving Minamata, Smith passed away in Tucson, Arizona.
