ArtFactFriday #20 Dec 8th Ming Smith
- William Mandela Matthews
- Dec 8, 2023
- 2 min read
The first female member to join Kamoinge, a collective of black photographers in New York in the 1960s. As well as the first black woman photographer to be included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art. Also one of the first African American women to break the color barrier in modeling alongside Grace Jones and Toukie Smith. Working in photography focused on black-and-white street photography, the artist stated ‘you have to catch a moment that would never ever return again, and do it justice.’
Detroit-born, Ming Smith attended the Howard University, Washington, DC. Ming Smith. Her career began in 1973 with the release of the Black Photographer’s Annual. As an early member of the Kamoinge Workshop, Ming’s early style was to shoot fast and produce intense images through the developing and post-printing processes. 1977-79 She produced “My Father’s Tears, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico” an experiment with hand-tinting. Smith is not limited to photography her use post production techniques, collage and paint shows her mastery of mixed media.
Smith’s subjects were often well-known black cultural figures ie Nina Simone, Grace Jones and Alice Coltrane. Smith often relates her work to the blues, in the art of photography.
I’m dealing with light, I’m dealing with all these elements, getting that precise moment. Getting the feeling — to put it simply, these pieces are like the blues.’
Recognition for Smiths work has been received recently due to high-profile exhibitions. The Brooklyn Museum’s ‘We Wanted A Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-85.’ The MoMA’s 2010 seminal exhibition, ‘Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography’. In 2020, Ming Smith published a book, Ming Smith: An Aperture Monograph. 2021, Smith received the Award in Art from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2023, The Museum of Modern Art opened Projects: Ming Smith a solo exhibition of her work.
Smith’s group exhibitions include: Museum of Modern Art’s “Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography’; Brooklyn Museum of Art’s “We Wanted A Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-85”; Smart Museum’s “Down Time: On the Art of Retreat”. “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power” Tate Modern, and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Broad, de Young Museum and Museum of Fine Arts Houston; and “Arthur Jaffa: A Series of Improbable, Yet Extraordinary Renditions”, commencing at The Serpentine Gallery, London. “Working Together: Louis Draper and the Kamoinge Workshop” at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Whitney Museum of American Art, J. Paul Getty Museum, and Cincinnati Art Museum.
Her works are in museum collections of the National Gallery of Art, J. Paul Getty Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of Arts, the Smithsonian Anacostia Museum & Center for African American History and Culture, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Modern Art, the AT&T Corporation and Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.She lives and works in New York City.
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