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Vintage Nursing Photo 060 - Nurse Midwife 19

time.com/26789/w-eugene-smith-life-magazine-1951-photo-es...

 

Not published in LIFE. A newborn delivered by nurse midwife Maude Callen, South Carolina, 1951.

W. Eugene Smith/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

 

 

W. Eugene Smith’s Landmark Photo Essay, ‘Nurse Midwife’

 

“In December 1951, LIFE published one of the most extraordinary photo essays ever to appear in the magazine. Across a dozen pages and featuring more than 20 of the great W. Eugene Smith’ pictures, the story of a tireless South Carolina nurse and midwife named Maude Callen opened a window on a world that, surely, countless LIFE readers had never seen — and, perhaps, had never even imagined. Working in the rural South in the 1950s, in “an area of some 400 square miles veined with muddy roads,” as LIFE put it, Callen served as “doctor, dietician, psychologist, bail-goer and friend” to thousands of poor (most of them desperately poor) patients — only two percent of whom were white.”

 

“Nurse Midwife” as it appeared in the Dec. 3, 1951, issue of LIFE magazine.

archive.org/details/Life-1951-12-03-Vol-31-No-23/page/134...

 

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Uploaded on December 20, 2024