![[Saipan]](/api/proxy-image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.getty.edu%2Fiiif%2Fimage%2F51c049ba-031b-43b5-b345-0142afe13c8f%2Ffull%2F808%2C%2F0%2Fdefault.jpg)
Getty Museum
[Saipan]
Creator
W. Eugene SmithAmerican Photographer · 1918–1978
All works by this person →W. Eugene Smith's interest in photography grew out of a boyhood passion for airplanes. His mother, herself an amateur photographer, suggested he make his own photographs of planes rather than borrow money from her to buy photos by mail. Thus began a prolific career that spanned five decades; Smith is said to have made at least twenty thousand negatives in one three-year period alone. Reacting to S
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- 1944
- Medium
- Gelatin silver print
- Culture
- American
- Department
- Photographs
- Institution
- Getty Museum
- Object ID
- 4780cd1b-f3da-42d6-8c8d-e70242d36af4
During the Battle of the Caves in the Saipan mountains in June 1944, W. Eugene Smith made three exposures of the discovery of this nearly dead child, "writhing with its head as a pivot...that had somehow become lodged (probably by its parents to keep the child from giving away their hiding place) with its head straight down in the dirt, head almost concealed by being wedged under the edge of a rock..." Having freed it from this premature grave, the soldier in the foreground holds the infant aloft, as if not yet comprehending his gruesome discovery. The soldier in the background, cigarette dangling from his mouth, stares at the child, transfixed. He holds his gun as he was trained, at the ready, as if he, too, has not yet realized that the threat in this instance is no more than a tiny baby.
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