A Walk To The Paradise Garden

If you have ever admired the beautiful photograph by Eugene Smith, you will enjoy the story behind it. 

The Photography of William Eugene Smith

(December 30, 1918, Wichita, Kansas – October 15, 1978, Tucson, Arizona)

The Iconic 1946 Photo taken by Eugene Smith

The following appears in the January 2013 issue of National Geographic.  The article is from Editor-in-Chief, Chris Johns and is entitled Wide World...Exploration is as near as your backyard.

Wide World..........Exploration is as near as your backyard.

Let me tell you about a photo that hangs in my house.  It was taken by W. Eugene Smith, and its title is "The Walk to Paradise Garden."  It shows his two young children, hand in hand, on a dirt path in the woods, emerging from shadows into the light of a clearing.  It reminds me of myself as a young boy exploring the wilderness of my backyard in southwestern Oregon.  My backyard had this:  my favorite black walnut tree, deer tracks, a hornet's nest, squirrels.  

     I would wander its seven acres, hoping to see a cougar (I never did).  Or go down to Griffin Creek, hoping to discover an arrowhead (I often did).  Years later, I understood that what my backyard contained, most of all, was the infinite horizon of possibility.

     There is another layer to Smith's photograph that also speaks to the power of exploration.  Smith had been seriously wounded while covering World War II in the Pacific.  He hadn't shot a photograph in a long time.  He was in pain and deeply troubled.

     " I followed my children into the undergrowth...How they were delighted at every little discovery!"  Smith wrote.  Then, an epiphany.  The sight of his children so engrossed in their small expedition, so in thrall to discovery, lifted him out of darkness.  "I wanted to sing a sonnet to life and to the courage to go on living it."

     You will read in these pages (National Geographic) about explorers who go to the deepest, coldest, highest places on Earth and beyond, but the truth is that exploration is as near as your backyard-and it can be profoundly life affirming.

Chris Johns is the Editor-in-Chief of National Geographic

*  The following appeared on Wordpress.com from AAS Holmes on October 1, 2011 @ 7:14pm and gives added knowledge of the man behind the photograph. 


W. Eugene Smith was no doubt one of the greatest war correspondents of the last century. As the photographer for Life, he followed the island-hopping American offensive against Japan, from Saipan to Guam, from Iwo Jima to Okinawa, where he was hit by mortar fire, and invalided back.

His war wounds cost him two painful years of hospitalization and plastic surgery. During those years he took no photos, and it was doubtful whether he would ever be able to return to photography. Then one day in 1946, he took a walk with his two children, Juanita and Patrick, towards a sun-bathed clearing:

"While I followed my children into the undergrowth and the group of taller trees – how they were delighted at every little discovery! – and observed them, I suddenly realized that at this moment, in spite of everything, in spite of all the wars and all I had gone through that day, I wanted to sing a sonnet to life and to the courage to go on living it….

Pat saw something in the clearing, he grasped Juanita by the hand and they hurried forward. I dropped a little farther behind the engrossed children, then stopped. Painfully I struggled — almost into panic — with the mechanical iniquities of the camera….

I tried to, and ignore the sudden violence of pain that real effort shot again and again through my hand, up my hand, and into my spine … swallowing, sucking, gagging, trying to pull the ugly tasting serum inside, into my mouth and throat, and away from dripping down on the camera….

I knew the photograph, though not perfect, and however unimportant to the world, had been held…. I was aware that mentally, spiritually, even physically, I had taken a first good stride away from those past two wasted and stifled years."  (See original text)

While he was right about his stride towards recovery, Smith miscalculated the photo’s importance. In 1955, a heavily-indebted Smith decided to submit the photo to Edward Steichen’s now-famous Family of Man exhibit at the MOMA. There, it became a finalist and then the closing image, thus cementing its position as the ur-icon of all family photographs.