Ming Smith at MoMA: photographing Black life, from the mundane to the magic

In 1978, American photographer Ming Smith became the first Black American photographer to have a work acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Now, she is the subject of a significant solo exhibition at the same museum.

Titled ‘Projects: Ming Smith’, the exhibition provides a comprehensive reintroduction to Smith's extensive oeuvre. Born in Detroit, raised in Columbus, and now based in Harlem, New York, where she has lived and worked since the 1970s, Smith has used her photographs and imagery to engage in the political, and blaze a trail for the generations of artists since. 

Ming Smith at MoMA

Her distinctive methods of conveying movement and rhythm, along with light and shadow, prove just how documentary photography can be transformed into a vehicle of emotion. For MoMA, which was also the first institution to acquire Smith’s work in 1979, this is the fourth exhibition in the Projects series, organised by the museum in collaboration with The Studio Museum in Harlem.

Her involvement in the Kamoinge Workshop, a Harlem-based photography collective founded to support the work of Black photographers, was also significant as she was the first female member to join in 1975. In addition to her well-known black and white street photography, which captures moments of Black life, Smith has also photographed defining cultural figures such as Grace Jones, Nina Simone and Alice Coltrane, all of whom lived in the Harlem neighbourhood. 

'For Ming Smith, the photographic medium is a site where the senses and the spirit collide,' says MoMA's associate curator of photography Oluremi C Onabanjo. 'Calling attention to the synaesthetic range of her photographic approach, this exhibition highlights how her images collapse the senses, encouraging us to attend to the hue of sound, the rhythm of form and the texture of vision.’ The highlights in the exhibition range from studies of Black avant-garde musicians and dancers to scenes from everyday life in Harlem and Pittsburgh's Hill District that Smith made in response to Ralph Ellison's novel Invisible Man and August Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle, a series of ten plays that explores 100 years of the African American experience. 

Notes Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem, 'Almost from the day she arrived in New York City, Ming Smith was at the centre of an extraordinary cultural ferment, [contributing] to the Black Arts Movement while creating a space for herself within Harlem's legendary Kamoinge Workshop. [Spanning more than] five decades, her contribution to modern photography is deeply significant – she continues to influence countless photographers through her singular documentation of society's humanity and pageantry.’

'Projects: Ming Smith', until 29 May 2023 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. moma.org