As a July 15 Deadline Looms, Photojournalists the World Over Are Channeling Their Inner Gene Smith…

American photojournalist W.Eugene Smith poses for portrait March 1, 1977 in New York City. (Photo by Arnold Newman/Getty Images)

In 2008, as they have every summer for 28 years, a committee of three judges will convene in a stifling conference room in Manhattan to plow through piles of photographs and proposals. When they emerge from behind closed doors, after four days of deliberation and two separate rounds of judging, the jury will have chosen the recipient of the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund’s annual grant.

At $30,000, the Smith grant, about to enter its third decade, is arguably photojournalism’s most consistenly prestigious, generous and longest-running award. It is dispensed to a single photographer attempting to complete a significant project conceived in the humanist tradition of renowned photo essayist W. Eugene Smith, who died in 1978. Among the grant’s first 15 recipients, recognized at pivotal, early stages of their careers: Jane Evelyn Atwood, Eugene Richards, Sebastiao Salgado, Gilles Peress, Donna Ferrato, Cristina Garcia Rodero and James Nachtwey.

This year’s deadline is only days away - July 15, 2008.

As you consider applying, please consider this series of questions:

-Why does W. Eugene Smith matter in this digital age?

-What is the relevance of his essay “Spanish Village” in the era of the video village?

-What is the relevance of Nurse Midwife in the age of WebMD?

I would argue that Smith’s commitment to documentary, humanistic photography speaks volumes to today’s young, brash, visually sophisticated (and over-stimulated) generation. Here was a man with a gargantuan appetitie for life and for new experiences. He had a compulsion for clutter and disarray and, at times, a tendency to let his finances slide. He was forever getting in fights with his editors, insisting that they were undermining his pure, single-minded vision. Indeed, Smith’s disdain for authority and outright contempt for authority figures, his unbending adhesion to principle, his commitment to righteous causes, and his explorations in myriad realms of modern culture (especially his passion for jazz) suggest that Smith, the journalist, the artist and the man, might as well have been a paradigm for the 21st century twenty or thirty something photographer.

Smith’s seminal 1972 study of a blighted Japanese village, “Minimata” documented how industry’s wastes had ravaged the land and the local population, killing hundreds and maiming many more. Like Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” before it “Minimata,” was the photographic medium’s first clarion call for ecological action. Had Smith shot only this one photo-essay, he would be conveying a message that is perhaps even more significant today: industrialization and rapid technological advances continue to manufacture “Minimatas” at an alarming rate, on a global scale. And photography - whether in digital or traditional format - remains an essential tool for stirring the world to witness and respond.

Both Smith, the photographer, and the Smith fund itself, thirty years after his death, remain beacons of compassion and commitment, reaffirming the power of the lone visionary in these turbulent times.

I encourage photographers everywhere to seriously consider applying this year. If you aren’t telling stories and opening eyes and waking people up, why are you in this business anyway?

—

David Friend, Vanity Fair’s editor of creative development and former director of photography of Life, is a member of the board of the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund. He is the author of Watching the World Change: The Stories Behind the Images of 9/11.

Gay Pride March - Thousands marched from Zoo Lake in Rosebank in Johannesburg to show their pride and celebrate diversity. Photo by: Shepherd Tozvireva 

A woman carries the one piece of furniture she has left - a chair- after she was evicted from her apartment building in Johannesburg. Photo by Sechaba Nhlapo

As the second class of the Photojournalism and Documentary Photography Program (PDP) is about to graduate and the first class graduates are proving their skills in their new jobs, it’s time to display and acknowledge the work done by the students.

PDP is a year-long photography course which provides aspiring photojournalists in South Africa the practical support of leading professionals and necessary skills to enter this highly competitive field. It culminates in a three month internship for each emerging photographer at a local newspaper.

To view some of the images from the newest generation of Africa’s photojournalists, don’t miss Portfolio 07 - an exhibition of work from the latest PDP graduates. The exhibition will run through February 6, 2008 at the Photo Workshop Gallery at the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg.

This course was launched in 2005 with significant support from Getty Images. After two cycles, seven students have graduated and 8 more will earn their certificates by the end 2007. Not one week passes in Johannesburg without PDP students’ images on the front pages and inside local publications.

A man is arrested by police for public violence while protesting against poor service delivery. Photo by Sechaba Nhlapo.

Sister Bernadette Boulle (pictured above) is the only one of her five siblings still alive. She worked as an office clerk for nine years before entering the faith as a nun. Picture by Samantha Simmons.