El fotógrafo de Minamata (The Minamata Photographer), directed by Andrew Levitas and starring Johnny Depp, Bill Nighy and Minami Hinase in the lead roles, opens in cinemas today.
An unrecognisable Johnny Depp steps into the shoes of William Eugene Smith, one of the most renowned photojournalists of the 20th century, considered by many to be one of the fathers of the modern photographic essay and one of the most revered photojournalists of World War II. W. Eugene Smith was internationally renowned for his striking and intimate images on the front lines of the Pacific during World War II (during which he was severely injured) or his photographs in rural South Carolina. Smith’s most important and influential work, however, was his final photo essay, created during a three-year assignment from 1971 to 1974 in the Japanese coastal town of Minamata, where he took his most famous photographs, including the iconic Tomoko Uemura in Her Bath, which turns 50 years old this 2021. New York, 1971. Life magazine sends him to the Japanese coastal city of Minamata, whose population has been devastated by mercury poisoning, the result of decades of industrial neglect. There, Smith immerses himself in the community and recovers his enthusiasm for his profession and with his camera captures the images that will travel around the world.
