BBC television crew follows famous footsteps through Pittsburgh

Thursday, May 04, 2006


	BBC cameraman Ross Keith compares today's view of the Cathedral of Learning to W. Eugene Smith's famous 1955 photo, "Smoky City," from the book "Dream Street." Click photo for larger image

Photos and text by Bill Wade
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Sam Stephenson, foreground, an expert on the documentary photography of W. Eugene Smith, accompanies BBC soundman Merce Williams and cameraman Ross Keith as they prepare to film at the location of a picture Smith made on Pittsburgh's South Side Slopes.
Click photo for larger image.

A four-person crew from the British Broadcasting Corporation spent yesterday exploring Pittsburgh in the footsteps of one of the giants of documentary photography.

They were filming part of a six-hour television series on the history of photography around the world. Their interest here was the photography of W. Eugene Smith, who in 1955 came to Pittsburgh to photograph for 6 months.

Smith was "an amazing photographer," BBC producer Zara Akester said. "He can capture the moment. He shoots and shoots and his essays grow out of control."

In 2001, The Carnegie Museum of Art exhibited Smith's photographic essay on Pittsburgh, which they called "Dream Street," after a street sign he photographed. The show was curated by Sam Stephenson from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, North Carolina.

The BBC crew spent a large portion of the day on Pittsburgh's South Side, both in the flats and on the slopes, interviewing Mr. Stephenson and filming current scenes of Smith's 1955 photos.

The TV segment on Smith is untitled, but Akester says it deals with the period around World War II and Henri Cartier-Bresson's "The Decisive Moment" book of 1952.

The television series will run next spring and will feature the giants of photography, from the 1830s to the present. BBC director Chris Rodley says the sixty-plus photographers will include the inventors of photography, Joseph Nicephore Niepce, William Henry Fox Talbot and Louis Daguerre as well as its more modern practitioners, including James Nachtwey, Nan Goldin, Joel Sternfeld, Stephen Shore, Martin Parr, Susan Meiselas, Gilles Peres, Araki, Andreas Gursky, Sally Mann, Thomas Struth, William Eggeston, Larry Clark, William Klein, Duane Michals (a McKeesport native), Harold Feinstein, Shomei Tomatsu and Dennis Hopper.

The BBC team traveled to Pittsburgh from New York City and goes to Los Angeles next. The BBC will also be traveling to Scotland, Japan, Germany, France and Italy for the project.


	BBC cameraman Ross Keith, director Chris Rodley, soundman Merce Williams and producer Zara Akerster set up to make a shot of the Pittsburgh skyline at the Duquesne Incline overlook. More pictures in the daily photo journal. Click photo for larger image