Ming Smith
(American, born 1947 in Detroit, active in New York City)
The Black Jewels of the USA II, from the series Invisible Man
Object Details
Artist
Ming Smith
Date
1991
Medium
Gelatin silver print
Dimensions
Image (slightly irregular): 4 7/16 × 6 1/8 inches (11.3 × 15.6 cm)
Sheet: 8 × 9 15/16 inches (20.3 × 25.2 cm)
Credit Line
Acquired through the generosity of the Friends of Photography Acquisition Committee
Object
Number
2021.032
For forty years, the photographs of Ming Smith did not receive the attention they deserved, but her (…)
For forty years, the photographs of Ming Smith did not receive the attention they deserved, but her expansive oeuvre has finally entered the canon of twentieth-century American photography. Her subjects encompass the Black cultural figures she moved among and self-portraits, as well as scenes and settings of significance, both to her personally and to her community and culture. All are rendered through Smith’s unique vision, which she developed at a time when Black artists were suppressed by the art establishment and barely recognized in the United States. In her series Invisible Man, blurry figures on city streets evoke Black Americans’ marginalization and struggles for visibility within the dominant white culture.
Smith was the only woman of the fourteen original members of the Kamoinge Workshop, a Black photographers’ collective founded in 1963.
—Kate Addleman-Frankel, the Gary and Ellen Davis Curator of Photography
