Ming Smith

Ming Smith is an African American photographer. She was the first African-American female photographer whose work was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Biography

Smith was born in Detroit, Michigan and raised in Columbus, Ohio. After graduating from Howard University, she moved to New York City where she found work modeling. While in New York she met photographer Anthony Barboza, who was an early influence.^[1]

Artistic style

Smith's approach to photography has included in-camera techniques such as playing with focus, darkroom techniques like double exposure, collage techniques and paint on prints. Her work is less engaged with documentation of events than with expression of experience. It has been described as surreal and ethereal, as the New York Times observed: "Her work, personal and expressive, draws from a number of artistic sources, preeminently surrealism. She has employed a range of surrealist techniques: photographing her subjects from oblique angles, shooting out of focus or through such atmospheric effects as fog and shadow, playing on unusual juxtapositions, even altering or painting over prints."^[2][3]

Career

Smith has photographed many important black cultural figures during her career, including Alvin Ailey and Nina Simone. In 1973 Smith was featured in the first volume of the Black Photographers Annual, a publication closely affiliated with the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s, and early 1970s.^[4] Two years later (1975), Smith became the first female member of the Harlem-based photography collective Kamoinge under director Roy DeCarava.^[5] The Kamoinge Workshop was founded in New York in 1963 to support the work of black photographers in a field then dominated by white men. The collective, which still exists today, has undertaken a range of initiatives, including exhibitions, lectures, workshops, and the publishing of portfolios for distribution to museums. Smith participated with Kamoinge in three groups shows in New York and Guyana.

Shortly after, she became the first Black woman photographer to be included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City.^[6] In addition to the MOMA, Smith's art has been featured at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Smithsonian Anacostia Museum & Center for African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.

Smith has twice exhibited at the Bellvue Hospital Centre in Morristown, New Jersey, through their Art in the Atrium exhibitions. The first was in 1995, for Cultural Images: Sweet Potato Pie, an exhibit curated by Russell A. Murray. In 2008 she contributed as part of the exhibition New York City: In Focus, part of Creative Destinations 2008 Exhibition of African American Art.

Smith's photographs are included in the 2004 Ntozake Shange book The Sweet Breath of Life: A Poetic Narrative of the African-American Family and Life.

In 2010, her work was included in the MOMA's exhibition Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography.^[7] Organized by curator Roxana Marcoci, it was curated by Sarah Meister through the Department of Photography. In 2017, a major survey exhibition of Smith's work was held at Steven Kasher Gallery in New York.^[8] The exhibition featured 75 vintage black and white prints that represented Smith's career.^[9][10][11]

Exhibitions

A selection of other exhibitions of Smith's work includes:

• 1976 - Exposure: Work by Ten Photographers; Creative Artists Public Service Program, New York City
• 1980 - Self-Portrait; Studio Museum of Harlem, New York, traveled to the Springfield Museum of Fine Arts, MA
• 1981 - Artists Who Do Other Art Forms; Just Above Midtown Gallery, New York City
• 1983 - Contemporary Afro-American Photography; Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, OH
• 1984 - 14 Photographers; Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York
• 1989 - Ming Smith, Anthony Barboza, Adger W Cowans, Robert Hale and Deborah Willis; Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, New York
• 1993 - Ming Smith: in a Minor Key; Crawford and Sloan Gallery, New York City
• 1999 - Black New York Photographers of the Twentieth Century: Selections from the Schomburg Center Collections; Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York
• 2000 - Reflections In Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present; organized by the Anacostia Museum and Center for African American Identity and Culture, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; traveling exhibition
• 2001 - Ming's Room; Porter Troupe Gallery, San Diego, CA
• 2001 - Life of the City, An Exhibition in Answer to 2001; Museum of Modem Art, New York
• 2002 - In the Spirit of Jazz, Ming Smith: 30 Year Retrospective; Concourse Gallery, Upper Arlington, OH
• 2003 - Ming's Room; curated by Deborah Willis, Rush Arts Gallery, New York
• 2003 - In the Spirit: Invisible Woman; African American Museum in Philadelphia, PA
• 2006 - Kamoinge Inc: Black Music from Bebop to Hip Hop; co-curated by Danny Simmons and Mark Blackshear, Brooklyn Academy of Music
• 2007 - BLACK and White on Black, Photographic Gallery, New York Contemporary Afro-American Photography; Hilliard University Art Museum, Lafayette, Louisiana
• 2014 - An Eye for Jazz: Works by Hugh Bell, Jill Freedman, Ming Smith, Ken Van Sickle; curated by Yulia Tikhonova, Tikhonova & Winter Fine Art, New York, NY
• 2017 - Ming Smith (retrospective), Steven Kasher Gallery, New York

References

External links

• Visually Speaking: The Timeless Art of Kamoinge
• Visually Speaking: The Image as a Catalyst for Social Change