W. Eugene Smith (1) spent 23 days following Dr. Ernest Ceriani, the only doctor in 400 square miles with a population of 2,000 people. He made 38 images. The chronological order of the images is less important than the impression he creates of an incredibly dedicated and hardworking country doctor who has to deal with everything from midwifery to amputations, heart attacks to broken bones. The images say nothing about his motivation but everything about his commitment to helping others and serving his community. The intimacy of W. Eugene Smith’s photographs takes the viewer/reader right into the heart of the doctor’s work. This image is typical.
“Dr. Ceriani has stitched the girl’s wound to minimize scarring, but he must find a way to tell the parents that her eye cannot be saved and they must take her to a specialist in Denver to have it removed.”
Briony Campbell (2) spent the last six months of her father’s life recording, preserving and perhaps in Susan Sontag’s word, ‘consecrating’ his end and her feelings about it. (3) She had a great deal of control over the images she made and the way they were presented with the exception of how they appeared in Die Zeit where the journalist inserted him/herself into the account. Her original intention was to preserve the story of her father’s death from pancreatic cancer but once the work was out in the world there was a chance that she and her father would become, again in Sontag’s terminology, ‘victims’ of the photograph. Her commentary is vital to understanding the series. The commentary reveals her explicit intentions.
W. Eugene Smith simply captioned his images. He has kept himself completely out of the picture. His intention is straightforward – to inform, educate and, in a way, to entertain. Briony Campbell communicates a coping mechanism and offers an invitation to share an experience.
Her project is ‘an ending without an ending’ because the events leading up to her father’s death are now permanent and can be revisited at any time by any number of people.
“When we said goodnight on his last lucid day, he said; ‘Think about what we should shoot tomorrow for the project’.
By tomorrow his shine was gone and just his shape remained – His unconscious contribution”
(1) http://time.com/3456085/w-eugene-smiths-landmark-photo-essay-country-doctor/?iid=sr-link1
(2) http://www.brionycampbell.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/The_Dad_Project_Briony_Campbell.pdf
(3) in La Grange, A. (2005) Basic Critical Theory for Photographers. Oxford: Focal Press
Chris Whittle 