Walk to Paradise Garden

(Pokemon Go)

Passeggiata nel Giardino del Paradiso

(Pokemon Go)

Ceramic, wax

H 24 W 21 L 15 cm - 2,8 Kg - 2017

William Eugene Smith realizzò questo scatto nel 1946 quando non sapeva ancora se avrebbe potuto riprendersi dai traumi subiti in guerra e ricominciare la sua professione di fotografo. Uscì con la macchina fotografica e i suoi due figli Pat e Juanita e vedendoli passeggiare sottobraccio capì che valeva la pena tener duro e continuare nonostante tutto.

Osservando quella foto presa da dietro non ho potuto fare a meno di immaginare cosa potesse succedere davanti se Pat e Juanita fossero stati dei millenial.

William Eugene Smith in the spring day when he made his Paradise Garden photograph, he was in the midst of a spiritual crisis. His memories of the horrors of what he'd witnessed on Saipan and Iwo Jima and other battlefields still brutally fresh in his mind, Smith had not made a photograph in many months. He was not sure that he could make another photograph that would, ultimately, matter.
It was to be a day, he later recalled, "of spiritual decision." He grabbed a camera and went outside with his young children, Pat and Juanita. He followed his children. He watched, and waited. And then, right in front of him, he saw it unfold.
"... 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..."
Damaged, hesitant, frightened—W. Eugene Smith had every excuse in the world not to spend that spring afternoon walking in the woods with his young children, hoping and perhaps even praying for a moment to reveal itself, a moment that would force him to raise the camera to his eye, and shoot. To his eternal credit, however, he did exactly that—and viewers have been drawing inspiration from his private, solitary triumph ever since. (Ben Cosgrove - Time - Sep 05 2013)
Observing the photo taken from the back side I was forced to figure out what was happening in the front and what if Pat and Juanita were new millennium children.