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Takeshi Ishikawa IS ON NYT LENS BLOG.

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/01/revisiting-minamata-and-a-storied-mentor/?_r=0
Takeshi Ishikawa IS ON NYT LENS Minamata, and a Storied Mentor
By JAMES ESTRIN
Takeshi Ishikawa IS ON NYT LENS BLOG._f0134059_2321781.jpg
W. Eugene Smith was impassioned in covering the deadly effects of industrial mercury pollution in Minamata, Japan, during the early 1970s. The photo essay dramatically revealed the poisoning’s human toll and brought Mr. Smith even further acclaim.
But he left Minamata exhausted and suffering from extensive injuries after a brutal beating by employees of a Japanese chemical company. It would be the last photo essay by the man who set the standard for the form with his Life magazine article “Country Doctor.”
Yet even as Mr. Smith was ending his photographic career, Takeshi Ishikawa, a 21-year-old Japanese photographer, was just beginning his. The two met on a Tokyo street when Mr. Ishikawa introduced himself as a young photographer. He offered to assist Mr. Smith with translation and was soon making contact sheets for him. He helped Mr. Smith and his new wife, Aileen, pack belongings before they moved to Minamata, and Mr. Ishikawa assumed that was the end of his time with them.
“They held their wedding reception in Tokyo, too, and a few days later I took them to Tokyo Station to see them off for good,” Mr. Ishikawa wrote recently. “As I was on the platform saying goodbye to them, Gene grabbed me and pulled me onto train right when the doors were closing. I was in effect involuntarily drafted by Gene and we took the 17-hour train ride to Minamata.”
Mr. Ishikawa was the couple’s assistant for the next three years as they documented effects of the mercury pollution. They worked together, ate together and were, Mr. Ishikawa said, “very much like a family.” But after Mr. Smith was badly injured by Chisso Corporation thugs in January 1972, his dependency on Mr. Ishikawa greatly increased.
“Before the incident he had a powerful presence, both as a person and as a professional,” Mr. Ishikawa, 63, wrote in a recent e-mail. “But afterwards he found it very difficult to work, and that mortified him. Throughout his career, Gene always seemed unsatisfied with his work, that was normal for him. But this time, being nearly incapacitated and in pain caused him much grief and sadness.”
After they worked in the darkroom together for many months, the book “Minamata” was published in 1975, and an exhibition of the photographs was held in the Minamata town hall. Mr. Smith died in 1978.
Mr. Smith had encouraged Mr. Ishikawa to take his own photographs, even while helping him with the grueling Minamata project. Mr. Ishikawa became friends with many young people in Minamata and kept in touch with several of Mr. Smith’s subjects in the following decades as he pursued his own career. Although he traveled constantly, he decided in 2008 that he should document what had become of the surviving victims.
Mr. Ishikawa’s photographs of them, along with his images from his time helping Mr. Smith, are gathered in a book, “Minamata Note 1971-2012: W. Eugene Smith, Myself and Minamata,” published in Japan by Chikura Shobo in November 2012.
On Oct. 16, Mr. Ishikawa will have a reunion of sorts with his mentor. He will attend the 34th W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund award presentation in Manhattan, where his photographs of Mr. Smith and of the survivors will be projected in a special presentation. But that will not be the end of the story that started 40 years ago.
“I want to show about Gene Smith and Minamata and I want to show Minamata continues, and is not finished,” he said. “No one is shooting there. The story continues. I must work.”
by ishikawa501 | 2013-10-02 23:07 | News


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