I don't think he really wanted this

Book three.

Book three.

Book three.

Book three.

Book three

Book three

Book three.

Book three.

An expensive box-set of three books. Two are facsimiles of Eugene Smith's original mock-ups and the third book has some essays about him and largish thumbnails of all the images in the other two books. Throughout this third book the mock-ups are referred to as a maquette (which a dictionary defines as a small reference statue of a potentially larger work) what Smith made were dummies as they are known in the publishing business. I've used the words mock-up for this review. Now consider this scenario:

A very professional and hugely creative photojournalist, after many years of frustration dealing with Picture Editors and Art Editors, decided to create a book of photos which would reveal his thoughts on the nature of this art form. To get it printed he needed to show potential publishers what the book would look like so he starts a mock-up with rough copies of his photos in various sizes to be pasted onto the blank pages. Because it used fairly thick paper the mock-up rapidly became quite thick which meant starting another one. The two mock-ups eventually had three hundred and forty-one photos that summed up his best work. He considered the layouts of each spread, size of the photos and their sequence to be extremely important. Unfortunately publishers showed no interest and the photographer moved on to other assignments. When he died all of his work was acquired by a university.

Years later a publisher decided that the time was right to print a book of the photographer's work. There were the two mock-ups which showed which photos went on each spread, their size, layout and all the photos were available in a university archive. The photographer would have been pleased that his work was going to be published using quality paper and printing like other photo books. Then something extraordinary happened, instead of printing the book the photographer actually wanted the publisher's printed the mock-ups and sold them at an excessively high price.

If Eugene Smith was alive in 2013 and the Uni of Texas Press said they were going to print his mock-up rather than a proper book of his work he would have laughed in their faces (and then maybe called his attorney).

Why wasn't it picked up by a publisher in the early sixties, probably because the book is, at first glance confusing (especially if anyone looked at the rough photo copies in his thick mock-ups). Smith wanted a short essay at the start of the book, a draft of this is in the third volume, with the rest of the pages using his photos which are not sequenced historically but a mixture of assignments and family portraits though the last few dozen cover the war in the Pacific. There was no text on the photo spreads.

William Johnson writes in the Introduction to the third book that Smith was challenging traditional ideas about layout and design. He wasn't a publication designer and it shows. The Chronology in the book says that in 1959 Carole Thomas became a sketch artist for the Big Book layout but these are not much different from spreads seen in the Family of Man book published in 1955 or in Life magazine layouts in the fifties.

This box set is only really of interest to academic libraries and maybe publication designers (which is why I have a copy). To expect anyone else to get much insight in Eugene Smith's amazing creativity and humanity by looking at very poor photo copies is a mistake though there is a slight redeeming factor in the third book because it's possible to get a feel of what the photographer was trying to achieve by looking through the sequence of excellently printed thumbnails.