A good friend of mine just gave me the DVD: Brilliant Fever: W. Eugene Smith and Pittsburgh and while I knew Smith’s work, I fell in love with it all over again watching it. This documentary is a window into the mind of a working photographer doing a four year project documenting the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1955 when the city was booming.

W. Eugene Smith is famous as both a photographer for Life Magazine and as a member of Magnum.

Smith, using his Leica film cameras took 17,000 images and then got overwhelmed attempting to winnow them down to the best ones to tell the story. He had two people helping him and they’re on the DVD (extras) telling the story of the process and what it was like to work with Smith.

Smith never showed the photographs but in 2003 a show was mounted called Dream Street (Smith had a street sign category of photographs in the collection). If this show ever gets resurrected it would be well worth seeing.

I’ve always liked Smith’s work and as Harold Feinstein says in the documentary, Smith is one of the greatest photographers ever but few appreciate him. Amazing given the scope and quality of his work.

If you’re not familiar with his work, check out W. Eugene Smith’s images in a Google image search. My guess is many of his photographs will be familiar to you, they are considered some of the greatest photographs of all time.