The Beauty Around Us

By Linda G. on June 3, 2009

Do you know the name W. Eugene Smith? I didn’t know the name until one of my Flickr.com contacts left a comment on one of my photographs. The comment, which has since been removed because I deleted and subsequently re-uploaded all of my photographs on Flickr, read: “Like the “Walk to Paradise Garden”. I used Google to search on the phrase “Walk to Paradise Garden” and learned of a famous photograph taken in 1946 by W. Eugene Smith.

The Walk to Paradise Garden
© The Heirs of W. Eugene Smith
Photo courtesy of Masters of Photography

W. Eugene Smith is a legendary American photojournalist who, according to Wikipedia, was known for his refusal to compromise professional standards and his brutally vivid World War II photographs. In 1945, while photographing an essay titled “A Day in the Life of a Front Line Soldier,” Smith was seriously wounded by a Japanese shell fragment. For the next two years Smith took no pictures. It was doubtful that he would ever be able to return to photography. However, one day during his period of convalescence, Smith took a walk with his two children. Even though it was still intensely painful for him to operate a camera, he came back with one of the most notable photographs of all time: “The Walk to Paradise Garden.” This image was the final picture in the most popular exhibition in the history of photography — the “Family of Man” Exhibition.

Now, on to my photograph. Bob and I made a 20-minute stop at the Audubon Center and Sanctuary in Jamestown NY on our way home from a motorcycle event that we attended on May 31st. We visited an eagle called Liberty and took a short walk around a pond.

An eagle called “Liberty”

Roger Tory Peterson Nature Interpretive Center (back view)

Then we entered the forest. There was a man, woman and a young child walking ahead of us. I wanted a photograph of the forest trail that we were on. I snapped a picture.

This is the photograph on which a Flickr contact left the comment “Like a “Walk to Paradise Garden”.

I want to thank my Flickr.com contact, Brian Corll, for his kind comment that led to my discovery of W. Eugene Smith and his photography.