ACTES SUD, 2010
Jane Evelyn Atwood
Softcover, 144pages
5.1 x 0.4 x 7.6 inches

Fiercely free and independent, Parisian-born American Jane Evelyn Atwood has been radically clear about her reasons for becoming a photographer for over thirty years. For her, the photographic act, fully immersed in the reality it documents, seems to be a moral act: it combines the taking of responsibility and the taking of a photograph. The commitment to each new work is initially experienced in terms of necessity and empathy. Jane Evelyn Atwood, first laureate of the prestigious W. Eugene Smith Foundation Award in 1980, first came to prominence in the 1970s with her research and reports on legionnaires, "old women", blind young people and landmine victims. She was one of the first to opt for what is commonly known as a long-term approach, penetrating the worlds that required her only after documenting them at length, like a filmmaker on a scouting expedition. Like W. Eugene Smith or Lewis Hine, Jane Evelyn Atwood's work is a milestone in the history of social photography.

Introduction by Catherine Chaine 78 photographs reproduced in color and duotone Biographical and bibliographical notes