“Smith’s obsessiveness was harnessed to an enormous talent, he wasn’t far from the mark when he wrote that this work would ‘create history.”
–Vicky Goldberg, New York Times

“These images are about the life that never gets into headlines.  Gene Smith’s Pittsburgh photographs show how much we still resemble those citizens in the summer of 1955.  And in his majestic inability to admit defeat we can see how dangerous that confidence could be to a man who saw its limits, and refused to give in,”
–Mary Panzer, Chicago Tribune

“Smith imagined a visual collage to rival Finnegan’s Wake in scope and intensity.  His astonishing ambition was his Faustian pact with the city.  There are no touching displays [in Dream Street] of picturesque individuality, just a city aesthetically dissected.”
–TIME OUT London

“More Dante than Joyce, this [Dream Street] is a magnificent vision of light and dark.”
—Evening Standard (London)

“Viewed together in this compelling, commanding publication, Smith’s photographs present energetic images of hope and despair, rebuilding and decay, poverty and affluence, and solitude and togetherness…. These images of mid-century, post-war Pittsburgh powerfully resonate with America today.”
—B&W (Black & White Magazine for Collectors of Fine Photography)

“Dream Street allows us to assess Smith’s greatest achievement; an extensive, complex, and utterly engaging photo-essay, each element of which has genuine bite.”
—Vincent Aletti, Village Voice

“Smith’s presence haunts this 176-page book, even a quarter century after his death.”
—Washington City Paper