With a gentle but decisive eye and a deep love for the spirits of the figures and spaces she captures, Ming Smith holds in her hands a truly unique world. A pioneer in her field, Smith has been telling stories for decades through her dynamic and considerate photographs; they follow her life as she modeled, danced, and explored through the midwest and east coast, and they follow all the lives she touched along the way.
Smith's primarily black and white street and spontaneous photography began when she was just a child. Detroit-born, she would grow up to graduate from Howard University and move to New York. There, she became the first woman member of the Kamoinge Workshop, a collective of influential Black photographers who were capturing and celebrating Black life in the city in the 60s and 70s. Ming Smith is art history—as Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem, puts it, Smith “lives deep in our history,” and is “central to how we think about photography in the 20th century and as we move into the 21st.”
As the first Black woman photographer to be acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York after simply dropping off her portfolio in the 70s, Smith’s journey came full circle at the beginning of 2023 with a featured solo exhibition in MoMA’s project space. Recently lauded with International Center for Photography’s (ICP) Lifetime Achievement Award, and with an upcoming exhibition at the Guggenheim alongside the works of Kerry James Marshall, Chris Ofili, Lorna Simpson, Doris Salcedo, Carrie Mae Weems and other great artists, Smith is finally seeing the profound recognition her phenomenal and extensive career deserves. She has been included in exhibitions internationally, including “Pictures by Women” at MoMA, “Soul of a Nation” at Tate Modern and the Brooklyn Museum, and “Working Together” at Whitney Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum. Smith is also featured in the collection of the Tate Modern, Whitney Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of Arts, in addition to many more.
Smith's primarily black and white street and spontaneous photography began when she was just a child. Detroit-born, she would grow up to graduate from Howard University and move to New York. There, she became the first woman member of the Kamoinge Workshop, a collective of influential Black photographers who were capturing and celebrating Black life in the city in the 60s and 70s. Ming Smith is art history—as Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem, puts it, Smith “lives deep in our history,” and is “central to how we think about photography in the 20th century and as we move into the 21st.”
As the first Black woman photographer to be acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York after simply dropping off her portfolio in the 70s, Smith’s journey came full circle at the beginning of 2023 with a featured solo exhibition in MoMA’s project space. Recently lauded with International Center for Photography’s (ICP) Lifetime Achievement Award, and with an upcoming exhibition at the Guggenheim alongside the works of Kerry James Marshall, Chris Ofili, Lorna Simpson, Doris Salcedo, Carrie Mae Weems and other great artists, Smith is finally seeing the profound recognition her phenomenal and extensive career deserves. She has been included in exhibitions internationally, including “Pictures by Women” at MoMA, “Soul of a Nation” at Tate Modern and the Brooklyn Museum, and “Working Together” at Whitney Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum. Smith is also featured in the collection of the Tate Modern, Whitney Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of Arts, in addition to many more.