'Dream Street' Photographs Displayed at Duke
Photographs of Pittsburgh taken in the 1950s by photojournalist W. Eugene Smith will be exhibited at the Center for Documentary Studies through March 30
Friday, January 10, 2003
"Dream Street: W. Eugene Smith's Pittsburgh Photographs" will be on display at the Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) from Jan. 10 through March 30. The exhibition is free and open to the public.
"Dream Street" brings together photographs, 85 of which will be displayed at CDS, from Smith's unfinished essay of Pittsburgh in the mid-1950s. This traveling exhibition marks the first time these photographs, which Smith considered the finest of his career, have been shown together.
In 1955, after having resigned his post at "Life" magazine, Smith was commissioned to spend three weeks in Pittsburgh and produce 100 photos for noted journalist and author Stefan Lorant's book commemorating the city's bicentennial, "Pittsburgh: Story of an American City." Smith stayed a year, compiling nearly 17,000 photographs for what would be the most ambitious photographic essay of his life.
Sam Stephenson, a research associate at CDS, helped assemble the exhibition as a guest curator at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, where the show opened.
"Only a fragment of the work was ever seen, despite Smith's lifelong conviction that it was his greatest set of photographs," Stephenson said. "The bulk of my work over five years has been trying to identify, from all the clues, fragments, and vague blueprints that Smith left behind, the set of some 200 Pittsburgh master prints that he deemed 'the synthesis of the whole.'"
CDS will display a smaller version of the original exhibition, which included 195 photographs. After closing in Pittsburgh, the exhibition traveled to the International Center of Photography in New York City and the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson.
"'Dream Street' is an astonishing first-ever portrayal, not just of Pittsburgh, but also of America at mid-century, by a master photojournalist," Stephenson added.
Stephenson has edited two books on the photographer: "Dream Street: W. Eugene Smith's Pittsburgh Project," published by the Center for Documentary Studies in association with W.W. Norton & Company, and "W. Eugene Smith," published by Phaidon Press in its Photography 55 series. Stephenson also wrote the script for the documentary film "Brilliant Fever: W. Eugene Smith and Pittsburgh," which will be shown at CDS at 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 23.
Stephenson, who has been awarded a fellowship by the National Endowment for the Humanities to continue his research on Smith, is currently directing a documentary and oral history project about the New York loft where Smith lived and worked and where jazz greats such as Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Bill Evans and Charles Mingus frequently held all-night jam sessions. Stephenson will present this work, "The Jazz Loft Tapes: W. Eugene Smith's Obsession with Music," at 7 p.m. March 26 at CDS.
An opening reception for the photo exhibition will be held at 6 p.m. Jan. 17 at CDS.
