Tomoko Uemura in her Mother’s Arms, W. Eugene Smith, 1971 - 1973
gelatin silver print, h 245mm × w 358mm
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© Aileen Archive (Osaka)
A mother with a deformed, agonized child. Smith was a photographer who doggedly pursued a subject. In 1971 he heard that the inhabitants of the Japanese fishing village of Minamata had been stricken by a mysterious affliction. A local factory had polluted the water with mercury. Smith embarked on a four-year long photography project following the people in their struggle to gain recognition.