Documenting Pain Through Love, “Tomoko and Mother in the Bath” by W. Eugene Smith

The notorious photograph “Tomoko and Mother in the Bath” (1972) by Eugene W. Smith has been discussed by influential authors including Susan Sontag and John Berger. And yet, this uncanny image of pain and love, reminiscent of Michelangelo’s Pietà, remains a mystery in many ways. Did Smith ask Tomoko and her mother to pose like the Virgin Mary and Jesus in Michelangelo's masterpiece, or did he capture them in a spontaneous embrace? How can the image be perceived as a spectacle of suffering by some, and as a monument to human resilience by others? If Smith had obtained full consent to photograph the two women in intimate scenes of profound vulnerability, why did Tomoko's family feel the need to renegotiate the terms concerning the circulation of Smith’s work? With reference to Smith’s evolving photographic approach and photo-textual research journey, we explore how his late work might be viewed through the lens of a listening gaze based not on empathy but on exotopy, a concept developed by philosopher Michail Bakhtin. We suggest that Smith, by building exotopic relationships with his witnesses, and by making these bonds visible through photography, may have achieved the seemingly unattainable—to document pain through love. By examining this controversial photograph, we hope to contribute to the study of the complex relationship between ethics and aesthetics in documentary images.