Smith, Ming
1947-present · Contribution: 1972-present
Became the first Black woman member of the Kamoinge Workshop around 1973 and, in 1979, the first African American woman photographer whose work was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection
Portraits are AI-generated interpretations, not photographs.
Impact on the world
A Howard University microbiology graduate who moved to New York in 1972 to model while photographing on the side, Smith was invited into the all-male Kamoinge Workshop by photographer Louis Draper, also profiled in this collection, after he overheard members debating photography’s status as fine art at a session held in Anthony Barboza’s studio; she went on to develop a distinctive, painterly style using blur, double exposure, and hand-tinting that Gordon Parks, also profiled in this collection, described as producing “wondrous stuff.” In 1979 she dropped off a portfolio at MoMA — where a receptionist initially mistook her for a delivery messenger — and, after negotiating a fairer price for her prints, became the first Black woman photographer in the museum’s permanent collection; despite this early milestone, broader institutional recognition did not follow for nearly four decades, until major surveys including the Brooklyn Museum’s We Wanted a Revolution (2017), Tate Modern’s Soul of a Nation (2017), and a full 2020 Aperture monograph established her as a foundational figure in American photography.
Life & background
Born in Detroit, Michigan, and raised in Columbus, Ohio, where her pharmacist father’s photography hobby first inspired her, Smith graduated from Howard University with a degree in microbiology in 1973 before moving to New York to model and photograph. She joined the Kamoinge Workshop in the early 1970s, had her work acquired by MoMA in 1979, and continues to exhibit internationally, with a 2023 solo project at MoMA and recent shows at the Centre Pompidou in Paris; she lives in Harlem.
Sources
- Studio Museum in Harlem; Aperture; ARTnews
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