8th Wonder of the World

I’ve been an active contributor to Quora, an interesting site designed around people asking questions (about almost anything) and requesting answers. It isn’t totally clear to me why people specifically ask ME for answers, but it probably has to do with what they’ve seen in previous posts.

So back in 2020 someone asked me, “What photo is your choice for 8th wonder of the world?” My reply was this one:

For those who may not know, this image is titled The Walk to Paradise Garden. It was taken in 1946 by W. Eugene Smith, a photographic hero of mine since I saw his Aperture monograph in the late 1960’s. Smith was badly wounded in the Pacific during WW2 while taking pictures for Life Magazine. After something like two years recovering, this was the first photograph he made after being blown up. He wrote a description of the moment, much of it having to do with the impossibility of loading film into his camera because of lasting damage to his hands. And the children in the image were his children.

After taking the photograph, Smith described the moment, “I suddenly realised that at this moment, in spite of everything, in spite of all the wars… I wanted to sing a sonnet to life and to find the courage to go on living it.” And he did. His late work in Minimata, Japan, documenting the horrors of industrial mercury poisoning, is breathtaking.

This photo was on the back cover of the book, The Family of Man, that catalogued the 1955 photography exhibition at MOMA, curated by Edward Steichen, hailed by many as one of the greatest exhibitions of photography ever. It was also the final image in the exhibition. The book is still in print.

I was able to buy a framed print of Walk to Paradise Garden about twenty years ago, using a small inheritance left to me by my mother. As it happens, the print was made by Smith himself and inscribed as a gift to his son, the boy in the picture.

If you’re curious to learn more, follow these links to the Aperture Monograph and Huxley-Parlour Gallery.