HAPPY TUESDAY TO AMY’S PLACE!
There is a story behind this picture.
Always known as a photographer who would take almost any chance if it meant getting the picture, Gene Smith’s good luck throughout the Pacific deserted him on May 23, 1945. While on the east coast of Okinawa photographing an essay titled "A Day in the Life of a Front Line Soldier," he was seriously wounded by a Japanese shell fragment. The missile hit him in the head cutting both cheeks, injuring his tongue and knocking out several teeth. Characteristically, he was taking pictures at the time and the fragment passed through his left hand before entering his cheek just below the eye and near the nose. His comment in the hospital later: "I forgot to duck but I got a wonderful shot of those who did... my policy of standing up when the others are down finally caught up with me."
Ernie Pyle, another great war correspondent, who was on Okinawa with Smith and was not so lucky, wrote of him, "Gene Smith is an idealist, trying to do great good with his work but it will either break him or kill him."
Smith’s war wounds cost him two painful years of hospitalization and plastic surgery. During these years he took no pictures and whether he would ever be able to return to photography was doubtful. Then one day, during his period of convalescence, Smith took a walk with his two children and even though it was still intensely painful for him to operate a camera, came back with one of the most famous photographs of all time: "A Walk to Paradise Garden." This memorable image was to serve as the final picture in the famous "Family of Man" Exhibition.
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Lamh Foistenach Abu!