what is the photo essay format that was created by life magazine

W. Eugene Smith: Master of the Photo Essay

100 years since the birth of W. Eugene Smith, we take a look at the work of a remarkable talent who described his approach to photography as working “like a playwright”

W. Eugene Smith

W. Eugene Smith’s membership with Magnum may have been brief, spanning the years 1955-58, but his work left left a deep impression on many of Magnum’s photographers, as it has upon the practice of photojournalism generally. Smith is regarded by many as a genius of twentieth-century photojournalism, who perfected the art of the photo essay. The following extract from Magnum Stories ( Phaidon ), serves as a pit-stop tour through his most enduring and affecting works.

With “Spanish Village” (1951), “Nurse Midwife” (1951), and his essay on Albert Schweitzer (1954), “Country Doctor” is first of a series of postwar photo essays, produced by Smith as an employee of Life magazine, that are widely regarded as archetypes of the genre. The idea to examine the life of a typical country doctor, at the time of a national shortage of GPs, was the magazine’s, not Smith’s. Though it was preconceived and pre-scripted, with a suitable doctor cast for the role before Smith got involved, he was immediately attracted to the idea of its heroic central character. He left to shoot the story the day he first heard about it – and before it was formally assigned, lest his editors decide to allocate the job to a different photographer.

Country Doctor

He described elements of his approach in an interview for Editor and Publisher later the same year:

“I made very few pictures at first. I mainly tried to learn what made the doctor tick, what his personality was, how he worked and what the surroundings were… On any long story, you have to be compatible with your subject, as I was with him.

I bear in mind that I have to have an opener and closer. Then I make a mental picture of how to fill in between these two. Sometimes, at the end of the day, I’ll lie in bed and do a sketch of the pictures I already have. Then I’ll decide what pictures I need. In this way, I can see how the job is shaping up in the layout form.

When a good picture comes along, I shoot it. Later I may find a better variation of the same shot, so I shoot all over again.”

"When a good picture comes along, I shoot it. Later I may find a better variation of the same shot, so I shoot all over again."

- w. eugene smith.

Central to his method was his seeking to fade “into the wallpaper”. De Ceriani, the subject of the story and the one constant witness to his working approach, recalled in an interview with Jim Hughes, Smith’s biographer, that after a week Smith “became this community figure. He may not have known everybody, but everybody knew who he was. And you fell into this pattern: he was going to be around, and you just didn’t let it bother you. He would always be present. He would always be in the shadows. I would make the introduction and then go about my business as if he were just a doorknob.”

Smith set about what might have been a straightforward assignment with a demanding intensity. “I never made a move where Gene wasn’t sitting there,” Ceriani explained; “I’d go to the john and he’d be waiting outside the door, so it would seem. He insisted that I call when anything happened, regardless of whether it was day or night… I would look around and Gene would be lying on the floor; shooting up, or draped over a chair. You never knew where he was going to be. And you never knew quite how or when he got there. He would produce a ladder in the most unusual places.”

For a four-week shoot, Smith selected 200 photographs for consideration by Life , and while he clearly had some influence over the layout, he did not control it. It did not live up to his expectations; in the interview with Editor and Publisher, Smith stated that he was “depressed” thinking about just how far short it fell. It’s not clear how different it might have been had he done the layout himself. We know that the prints he made were rejected by Life ’s art director, on the grounds that they were too dark and would not reproduce well on the magazine’s pages. Smith’s vision was darker in other regards too. Photographs not featured in Life’ s layout, but reproduced or exhibited later, include a powerful series of 82-year-old Joe Jesmer being treated following a heart attack – an old man whose face terrifyingly reveals the apparent consciousness of his imminent death. Smith also chose, for his own exhibitions, troubling photographs of Thomas Mitchell prior to his leg amputation, as well as other images more baroque than those selected by Life . But the two brilliant images between which the layout hangs – his opener of the stoical doctor on his way to the surgery under a brooding sky and his closer, showing Ceriani slumped in weary reflection with coffee and cigarette – clearly reflect Smith’s won intentions for how the story should appear.

It is in the sophistication of its narrative structure that Smith’s innovation lies. In recorded conversations between Smith and photographer Bob Combs in the late 1960s, he elaborated on the ingredients of his approach (referring here to another story, “Nurse Midwife”):

“In the building of a story, I being with my own prejudices, mark them as prejudices, and start finding new thinking, the contradictions to my prejudices, What I am saying is that you cannot be objective until you try to be fair. You try to be honest and you try to be fair and maybe truth will come out.

Each night, I would mark the pictures that I took, or record my thoughts, on thousands of white cards I had. I would start roughing in a layout of what pictures I had, and note how they build and what was missing in relationships.

"In the building of a story, I being with my own prejudices, mark them as prejudices, and start finding new thinking, the contradictions to my prejudices, What I am saying is that you cannot be objective until you try to be fair."

I would list the picture to take, and other things to do. It began with a beginning, but it was a much tighter and more difficult problem at the end. I’d say, ‘Well, she has this relationship to that person. I haven’t shown it. How can I take a photograph that will show that? What is this situation to other situations?’

Here it becomes really like a playwright who must know what went on before the curtain went up, and have some idea of what will happen when the curtain goes down. And along the way, as he blocks in his characters, he must find and examine those missing relationships that five the validity of interpretation to the play.

I have personally always fought very hard against ever packaging a story so that all things seem to come to an end at the end of a story. I always want to leave it so that there is a tomorrow. I suggest what might happen tomorrow – at least to say all things are not resolved, that this is life, and it is continuing.”

Smith refers to working “like a playwright”. Elsewhere he compared his work to composing music, but perhaps it is the literary reference that is most relevant to “Country Doctor”. His doctor is the emblematic hero of a drama that unfolds through several episodes – literally, acts. His opening and closing tableaux have all the content of soliloquies: single moments loaded with psychological detail and environmental description that frame the play. Unlike the experience of a play in the theatre where we watch it once, from beginning to end – we read the magazine essay back and first, at the very least reviewing the images again once we have read through it. The details of the doctor’s actions lend weight to the opening and closing portraits, and vice versa, so that the depth of its characterization reveals itself across the images as a group. It would not work if it were not wholly believable as a record of a real man, and real events. As such, its strength and its place in the history of the genre lies in the manner in which it combines a record of reality within an effective dramatic structure; in short, as a human drama.

Smith’s essay-making technique was not something he developed independently of the media that published his pictures. It began with essays produced in the early 1940s for Parade , where photographers were encouraged to experiment with story structure (without the tight scripting Smith later encountered at Life magazine) and where stories often focused on an attractive central character achieving worthwhile goals against formidable odds. Although Smith is on record as being in constant struggle with Life over its scripts – as well as its layouts, the selection of photographs, and the darkness of his prints – it seems appropriate to view his achievement as the product of a dialogue with the needs and practices of the magazine. The battles were over the details of particular decisions rather than over the mission or purpose. In fact, Smith wholly identified with the Life formula, taking and refining it to a new level of sophistication.

After Smith left life in 1954 – after several prior resignations, his final departure was over the editorial slant given to his essay on Albert Schweitzer – he embarked on his ambitious Pittsburgh essay. Working for the first time outside the framework of a magazine, with only a small advance from a book publisher, and encouraged by Magnum’s reassurance that he would find a worthwhile return from serial sales of independently executed essays, he believed that he was positioned to produce his best work yet. He wrote to his brother that he Pittsburgh essay would “influence journalism from now on”, and described in an application for a Guggenheim Fellowship that he “would recreate as does the playwright, as does the good historian – I would evoke in the beholder an experience that is Pittsburgh.”

It did not really work. Becoming a landmark in the ambition of the photo essay, and including some of his strongest photographs, the Pittsburgh essay nevertheless failed to be the symphony in photographs for which Smith strove, After four years of work, it was finally published in the small-format Popular Photography Annual of 1959 , run as a sequence of “spread tapestries” – as he described his intended layout to the editor of Life . He titled the essay Labyrinthian Walk, indicating the story was less about the city than a portrait of himself locked in a life-or-death struggle with a mythical demon. Although he himself was responsible for the layout, he judged it a failure. The dream – or necessity – of Magnum failed also. He did only two minor assignments in the time he was a member, and he left completely broke, his family in poverty, with Magnum itself smarting from the investment it too had ploughed into the Pittsburgh project.

After the “Country Doctor” story was published, Smith declared that he was “still searching for the truth, for the answer to how to do a picture story”. Later, in 1951, he stated in a letter to Life editor Ed Thompson, “Journalism, idealism and photography are three elements that must be integrated into a whole before my work can be of complete satisfaction to me.” In 1974, 20 years after embarking on the Pittsburgh essay, Smith was vindicated with the triumphant artistic and journalistic success of “Minamata”, his story about the deformed victims of the pollution by the Chisso chemical plant in Japan. The story became a new paradigm for the possibilities of photojournalism, in part because of its unambiguous moral purpose.

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The birth of the photo essay: The first issues of LIFE and LOOK

Unpublished Paper held at: Summer School “Raumgeflechte / Spatial Relations”, University of Zurich – June 10, 2014 Sektion II: “Photographs on Pages”

With the arrival of photographs on the pages of magazines and newspapers a new format of communication developed: The photo essay. Today, photo essays are ubiquitous. But what led to their invention? The birth of the photo essay can easily be dated with the publication of LIFE magazine in 1936, where the term photo essay has been coined. A comparison of the first issues of LIFE magazine and LOOK, which appeared a few weeks after LIFE has been successfully launched, sheds some light on what photo essays are – and why they have risen very quickly to take over the publishing world.

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LIFE Magazine and the Power of Photography

Margaret Bourke-White, Flame Burner Ann Zarik , 1943, printed about 2000. Gelatin silver print. Princeton University Art Museum. Photo by Margaret Bourke-White. © LIFE Picture Collection.

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Reconsidering the pictures we remember. Revealing the stories we don’t know.

From the Great Depression to the Vietnam War, almost all of the photographs printed for consumption by the American public appeared in illustrated magazines. Among them, Life magazine—published weekly from 1936 to 1972—was both wildly popular and visually revolutionary, with photographs arranged in groundbreaking dramatic layouts known as photo-essays. This exhibition takes a closer look at the creation and impact of the carefully selected images found in the pages of Life —and the precisely crafted narratives told through these pictures—in order to reveal how the magazine shaped conversations about war, race, technology, national identity, and more in the 20th-century United States. The photographs on view capture some of the defining moments—celebratory and traumatic alike—of the last century, from the Birmingham civil rights demonstrations to the historic Apollo 11 moon landing. Far from simply nostalgic and laudatory, the exhibition critically reconsiders Life ’s complex, and sometimes contradictory, approach to such stories through works by photographers from different backgrounds and perspectives who captured difficult images of ethnic discrimination and racialized violence, from the Holocaust to white supremacist terror of the 1960s.

Drawing on unprecedented access to Life magazine’s picture and paper archives as well as photographers’ archives, the exhibition brings together more than 180 objects, including vintage photographs, contact sheets, assignment outlines, internal memos, and layout experiments. Visitors can trace the construction of a Life photo-essay from assignment through to the creative and editorial process of shaping images into a compelling story. This focus departs from the historic fascination with the singular photographic genius and instead celebrates the collaborative efforts behind many now-iconic images and stories. Particular attention is given to the women staff members of Life , whose roles remained forgotten or overshadowed by the traditional emphasis on men at the magazine. Most photographs on view are original working press prints—made to be used in the magazine’s production—and represent the wide range of photographers who worked for Life , such as Margaret Bourke-White, Larry Burrows, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Frank Dandridge, Gordon Parks, and W. Eugene Smith.

Interspersed throughout the exhibition, three immersive contemporary “moments” feature works by artists active today who interrogate news media through their practice. A multimedia installation by Alfredo Jaar, screen prints by Alexandra Bell, and a new commission by Julia Wachtel frame larger conversations for visitors about implicit biases and systemic racism in contemporary media.

“ Life Magazine and the Power of Photography” offers a revealing look at the collaborative processes behind many of Life ’s most recognizable, beloved, and controversial images and photo-essays, while incorporating the voices of contemporary artists and their critical reflections on photojournalism.

The exhibition is accompanied by a multi-authored catalogue, winner of the College Art Association’s 2021 Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award.

• Ann and Graham Gund Gallery (Gallery LG31)

LIFE, November 23, 1936 (Cover photograph by Margaret Bourke-White), 1936

Illustrated periodical. LIFE Picture Collection. Photo by Life magazine. © LIFE Picture Collection.

Margaret Bourke-White, At the Time of the Louisville Flood, 1937

Gelatin silver print. The Howard Greenberg Collection—Museum purchase with funds donated by the Phillip Leonian and Edith Rosenbaum Leonian Charitable Trust. Photo by Margaret Bourke-White. © LIFE Picture Collection.

Gordon Parks, Red Jackson, Harlem, New York, 1948

Gelatin silver print. Princeton University Art Museum. Photograph by Gordon Parks. Courtesy of and copyright the Gordon Parks Foundation.

Margaret Bourke-White, Blast furnace cleaner Bernice Daunora, part of the top gang at Carnegie-Illinois Steel Corp., wearing protective breathing apparatus fr. escaping gas fumes, 1943

Gelatin silver print. LIFE Picture Collection. Photo by Margaret Bourke-White. © LIFE Picture Collection.

Margaret Bourke-White, Fort Peck Dam, Montana, 1936

(p. 96–97) [Harlem Gang Leader opening spread], 1958. LIFE magazine.

Illustrated periodical. Princeton University Art Museum. From Life magazine, November 1, 1948, pages 96–97. Photograph by Gordon Parks. Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation. Text © 1948 LIFE Picture Collection.

Robert Capa, Normandy Invasion on D-Day, Soldier Advancing through Surf, 1944

Gelatin silver print. The Howard Greenberg Collection—Museum purchase with funds donated by the Phillip Leonian and Edith Rosenbaum Leonian Charitable Trust. Robert Capa © International Center of Photography / Magnum Photos.

Margaret Bourke-White, Mrs. Nelson and her two children outside her laundry which she operates without running water, 1936

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Untitled (Peiping), 1948

Gelatin silver print. LIFE Picture Collection. Henri Cartier-Bresson © Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson / Magnum Photos.

Alfred Eisenstaedt, VJ Day in Times Square, 1945

Gelatin silver print, contact sheet. Alan and Susan Solomont. Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt. © LIFE Picture Collection.

J. R. Eyerman, Audience watches movie wearing 3-D spectacles, 1952

Gelatin silver print. The Howard Greenberg Collection—Museum purchase with funds donated by the Phillip Leonian and Edith Rosenbaum Leonian Charitable Trust. Photo by J. R. Eyerman. © LIFE Picture Collection.

Alfredo Jaar, Life Magazine, April 19, 1968, 1995

Suite of three pigment prints on Innova paper. Courtesy Alfredo Jaar and Galerie Lelong & Co., New York. © Alfredo Jaar.

Margaret Bourke-White, Flame Burner Ann Zarik, 1943, printed about 2000

Gelatin silver print. Princeton University Art Museum. Photo by Margaret Bourke-White. © LIFE Picture Collection.

Alfred Eisenstaedt, Contact sheet w. frames from photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt’s famed set of sailor kissing the nurse and other images of the Times Square VJ-Day celebrations, 1945

Gelatin silver print, contact sheet. LIFE Picture Collection. Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt. © LIFE Picture Collection.

J. R. Eyerman, 3D Movie contact sheet, 1952

Gelatin silver print, contact sheet. LIFE Picture Collection. Photo by J. R. Eyerman. © LIFE Picture Collection.

Carl Mydans, (Young man playing guitar in the stockade, Tule Lake Internment Camp, Newell, California), 1944

Gelatin silver print. International Center of Photography, the LIFE Magazine Collection, 2005. Photo by Carl Mydans. © LIFE Picture Collection.

Vintage NASA photograph of the Apollo 11 moon landing, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), 1969

Chromogenic print. Abbott Lawrence Fund.

Gjon Mili, Stroboscopic image of intercollegiate champion gymnast Newt Loken doing floor leaps, 1942

Gelatin silver print. LIFE Picture Collection. Photo by Gjon Mili. © LIFE Picture Collection.

In the News

Generously supported by Patti and Jonathan Kraft.

Additional support from Kate Moran Collins and Emi M. and William G. Winterer.

With gratitude to the Phillip Leonian and Edith Rosenbaum Leonian Charitable Trust for its generous support of Photography at the MFA.

“ Life Magazine and the Power of Photography” is co-organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Princeton University Art Museum.

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