I was about 12 years old – maybe 13 – and my father had invited me to go with him to a photo gallery.   In truth, I anticipated being pretty bored…the weekend alternatives always seemed to involve either going to the local auto body shop to get some kind of obscure car part inserted into our perennially troubled and aging Toyota or a photography gallery…..but between the two, quiet rooms filled with images definitely trumped the dusty auto shop visits with their plastic seats and fluorescent lights.

I don’t remember the name of the gallery – I think it was small and maybe had dark walls with low lights – one over each black and white image. As usual, I wandered off as soon as we got there – at that age I was anxious to convey my ability to navigate the world on my own.

Surprisingly, though, I found a photograph that struck me as just beautiful. Full of shadows and light filtering through the tangled bushes and trees of a wooded area it centered around two small children walking away from the photographer into what might be a clearing. The light was focused just on them and was so pretty. The title was perfect – Walk to Paradise Garden.

My father found me staring at the image and said that it was very famous and taken by W. Eugene Smith. The children were Smith’s own.

“Oh, “ I said, holding my father’s large hand and thinking that his family was at such deep peace, perhaps unlike my own. Ours was a loving family but had recently reformed itself through divorce and I had not yet gotten used to the chasm that separated my two homes – one with my mother and one with my father.

My father listened quietly to my romantic description and then suggested that I look at something else by Smith – something he said that was really important. I reluctantly dragged myself away from the little children and their perfect world, sure, with the confidence of an adolescent, that once again he was wrong and I was right.

When we reached the other photograph my father was quiet. It was called Tomoko Uemura in her Bath, an image of a young girl, perhaps my age, being held up in the water by her mother. The girl’s body was tense and clearly some terrible genetic mistake had pulled her into painfully stiff pose. Added to that, her nakedness made me extremely uncomfortable, being of an age where my own body was changing and confused me daily.

This photo didn’t have any of the perfection that the first one did. I felt confused and wanted to leave – wondering why my father was showing me something so frightening. I wanted to cover the girl up and make whatever had gone wrong right – but I knew that I couldn’t and so was left with this awkward urgency to do something.

Then he told me a story about why the photo was taken. Smith and his wife went to Minimata, a small fishing village in Japan where for decades the Chisso Corporation had dumped high levels of mercury into the water. Like many others who lived in the community, Ryoko, Tomoko’s mother, had ingested this mercury through local shellfish and this painful and shortened life for her child was the result.

I learned that the photographer and the mother had worked together to create what I now began to see as a pieta as beautiful as any done of Mary and her son by the famous Renaissance painters. Ryoko had suggested the bath, Smith’s unparalleled talent had allowed him to place them in the perfect light – a halo was created around the mother and child which illuminated their deep connection and love.

“What will happen?” I asked my father.

He told me that this kind of tragedy will keep happening if we don’t stop these practices. That children will keep dying. But he also said that this photo and the others done in Minimata had helped enormously. That it had been exhibited around the world and that the legal claims of victims of this disease were finally really being heard  – in large part because photographers like Smith were making sure that the world saw the true human impact of such environmental injustice.

The photo was exhibited in Japan soon after being taken and published in Life magazine and other major journals. Smith and his wife committed themselves to finding justice for the victims of Minimata disease and their work continues to assist. As recently as March of this year another settlement was reached for victims.

Perhaps even more importantly, the impact of the photo has been most inspirational as a warning sign to those companies who see financial gain as the only goal. In an era where we are just starting to talk about triple bottom lines – economic success, yes, but also only if accompanied by social and environmental achievements – we continue to need the lessons taught to us by Smith, Ryoko, and Tomoko who worked together decades ago to show the world what we needed to know.

Years later, after Tomoko had died at the young age of 21, her parents decided that she had done enough and asked that her image be taken out of circulation. Smith’s widow gave them the copyright to the photo and since that time Tomoko’s image has been primarily a private one.

While I have a continued fondness for Walk to Paradise Garden I found out that 1955, the year that it was made, was anything but peaceful for him. It’s told that he fought bitterly with his editors, struggled with colleagues, and had only published four photographs.  And while it was quite famous, and had been the final image in the renowned Family of Man exhibition, it seemed that the image I had ascribed such power to was not the one to really change the world.

Yes, environmental rape continues and our children are at risk because of it. But we have become empowered in these battles – in large part because of artists like Smith who have given us the most fundamental evidence we need to make change – the human face of human rights.

Art works. To make change.