PHILIPPE HALMAN: How can be this financed? Is there any way, in America today, to pay a man back for work?
W. EUGINE SMITH: Time and pay? I don't know. It is a new problem. How long did it take Joyce to do Ulysses? Finnegan's Wake? And what were his return? I could never be rested within myself without doing this.
PHILIPPE HALMAN: But what of the photographer who does not have financial means?
W. EUGINE SMITH: I don’t. Sometimes it seems I financed it from the lining of my stomach. As for others--if asked, I will advise them not to do it -- and I will hope they do.
PHILIPPE HALMAN: What if nobody sees it?
W.EUGINE SMITH: The goal is the work itself, and with any real finality, the artist is never sure if he is or isn’t finished.
(Excerpt from Smith’s interview with Philippe Halsman regarding the Pittsburgh project, 1957)
Dream Street: W. Eugene Smith's Pittsburgh Project
ISBN:0393325121
