Sam Stephenson

WEDNESDAY 6 JUNE 2018
6.30 PM
MAST.AUDITORIUM

SAM STEPHENSON
W. EUGENE SMITH’S SINK: FROM PITTSBURGH TO A LEGENDARY UNDERGROUND NEW YORK JAZZ LOFT

Introduction by Urs Stahel

Sam Stephenson has spent more than twenty years studying the life and work of W. Eugene Smith, following his footsteps in twenty-six states, Japan and the Pacific and interviewing more than five hundred people that knew the photographer in one capacity or another. At MAST he will present his documentary, lyric research, focusing on the two largest bodies of work of his career – America’s primary industrial city, Pittsburgh, where Smith took 22,000 photographs in 1955-1958, and a legendary underground jazz loft in New York City where Smith made 40,000 photographs and 4500 hours of audio tapes from 1957 to 1965, featuring musicians like Thelonious Monk, Chick Corea, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Paul Bley and countless obscure figures. Stephenson’s talk will also feature Chuck-will’s-widow,a 9-minute film by the American filmmaker Jem Cohen, based on a chapter in Stephenson’s latest book.

Sam Stephenson is a writer and documentarian whose book, Gene Smith’s Sink, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2017. He also authoredThe Jazz Loft Projectfor Alfred A. Knopf (2009) and Dream Streetfor W.W. Norton (2001). He has written for The New York Times, The Paris Review, Tin House, the Oxford American, and others. A former fellow of the NEH, two-time ASCAP Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson prize winner, and Lehman Brady Visiting Joint Chair Professor in Documentary Studies and American Studies at Duke University and UNC–Chapel Hill, he now lives with his family in Bloomington, Indiana.

Foto: W. Eugene Smith in his workroom