"Photography at best, speaks in a low voice, but sometimes, usually very rare, one or more images is able to break into our consciousness [...] Thanks to photography, some people - maybe even many of us - are sometimes inclined to heed the voice of reason and to try to repair the evils of this world ... Others are probably better understand the people living in foreign countries and begin to bestow their compassion [...] Yes, photography is silently voice [...] And very important, although not the only voice in my life. I believe in photography. "These wordsWilliam Eugene Smith, as the above photograph, entitled" Tomoko Uemura in the bath, "from the album" Minamata. "Is the name of Japan's Minamata Bay, which from 1932 to 1968 lowered were wastewater containing toxic mercury compounds. Their concentration in water was not large, but odkładały harmful substances in fish and other seafood consumed by the inhabitants of surrounding villages. Effects of contamination appeared only in the fifties. The affected domestic cats began en masse to throw into the sea. In 1956, recorded its first cases in humans - a serious disease which destroys the nervous system needed 24 years to reveal itself in all its horrible forms. Attacking mainly the brain, cause mental retardation, impaired vision, hearing i koordynacji ruchowej, osłabienie mięśni, w najcieższych przypadkach obłęd, paraliż, śpiączkę i na końcu śmierć. Nie oszczędzała nawet nienarodzonych płodów w łonie matki. Fakt, iż w 1959 roku odkryto co wywołuję tą straszną chorobę (przyczyniły się do tego między innymi te nieszczęsne koty), nie przeszkadzał korporacji Chisso przez następne 9 lat wypuszczać do zatoki Minamata tych samych trujących związków rtęci - ot, tak po prostu, w imieniu produktu krajowego brutto.
Gene Smith spędził 3 lata na dokumentowaniu ofiar choroby. Wynajął dom od jednej z dotkniętych her family, with whom he shared kitchen (with klepiskiem instead of the floor) and bathroom, which caused the negatives. John G. Morris, a friend of Smith, in his autobiography, which I recently fell into his hands, he writes that Gene and his wife "knew the next victim of chemical poisoning: Shinobu Sakamoto, lovely teenage girl, close to suicide several times; Tomiji Matsuda, a young fan baseball, which he had no chance, that he himself could ever grow this sport, because he was blind, Takako Isayamę, boy, you had to be worn anywhere on the hands, but who had enough strength to scream: "Strawberries, but I like!" and Tomoko Uemura, blind, and blind girl with deformed limbs. "
It's a picture of her has become a symbol.
photographer in January 1972 together with patients with Minamata took part in a demonstration at the factory in the company Chisso Goi, near Tokyo. The staff set a trap for the demonstrators - let them inside, and then severely beaten. Gene never quite gathered up after the incident - he suffered from various ailments for the rest of your life.
Although naively this would sound, I think photography can be a tool to fight evil. Ba, a really powerful tool. Smith is my role model photographer, who in this way it is used, personally engaging all its strength and putting at stake his whole life, so as to tell people about the tragedy and make it never to be repeated. Photo Tomoko is a very intimate and subjective vision of the disease. It is with this is also a really powerful voice against environmental pollution and indiscriminate industrialization at any price. Well, just as Nachtwey photo also recalls Michelangelo's Pieta. With photo exudes warmth and calm, but there is also on the unimaginable tragedy that did not have to happen after all.
in 1975 when Gene Smith at the congress of the National Press Photographers Association, he delivered a lecture illustrated with photographs of the Minamata, "when the time came for the famous photograph of Tomoko in the bath, in tears."
