Not quite a household word in photography but a master of his trade, the late W. Eugene Smith offered a brutal insight into man's highest and lowest moments. His technique could be as flashy and obvious as a calling card ("Empire State Building at Midnight") or tempered to a grainy, blink-of-a-second in time ("Three Men Hugging, Andrea Doria"). Remarkably, these photos--mostly from the '50s--ferret out weighty content in the most everyday places.
Angle-featured, sinuous and dramatic as a late Michelangelo figure, a yarn spinner sits on a sidewalk in Spain, her body rising gracefully as she bites a coil of thread free from her finished spool. Adding light to the face so it seems illuminated by a celestial shaft, Smith makes "Spinner" an unsentimental ode to feminine grace and resilience.
