Page 192 - The 60.Venice Biennial & MoMA issue of WOA Contemporary Art magazine

WORLD-CLASS ART

PROJECTS: MING SMITH

MING SMITH, ON VIEW IN THE MUSEUM’S STREET-LEVEL
GALLERIES. A PHOTOGRAPHER WHO HAS LIVED AND WORKED
IN NEW YORK SINCE THE 1970S, MING SMITH HAS SERVED AS
A PRECEDENT FOR A GENERATION OF ARTISTS ENGAGING
THE POLITICS AND POETICS OF THE PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGE.
THROUGH A DEEP EXPLORATION OF THE ARTIST’S ARCHIVE, Ming Smith. Womb, 1992. Courtesy of the artist. © Ming Smith.
THE EXHIBITION OFFER A CRITICAL REINTRODUCTION TO
SMITH’S WORK THROUGH HER DISTINCTIVE APPROACH TO
MOVEMENT, LIGHT, RHYTHM, AND SHADOW, HIGHLIGHTING
HOW SHE TRANSFORMS THE IMAGE FROM A DOCUMENT
OF PHOTOGRAPHIC CAPTURE INTO A SPACE OF EMOTIVE
EXPRESSION..

For Ming Smith, photography is a site where the senses and the
spirit collide through the prism of light. “I’m dealing with all these
elements, getting that precise moment,” Smith has said. “Getting
the feeling, the way the light hits the person- to put it simply, these
pieces are like the blues.”
Ming Smith, Sun Ra Space II. 1978. Courtesy of the artist. © Ming Smith
Projects: Ming Smith offers a critical reintroduction to a
photographer who has lived in New York since the 1970s, and
whose work has served as a precedent for generations of artists
engaging the politics and the poetics of the photographic image
in relation to experiences of Blackness. Through her skillful
deployment of long exposures - which involves slowing the
shutter speed of the camera lens to render movement as blur—
Smith dissolves the boundaries between her subjects and their
surroundings. Her dreamlike, abstract compositions are led by
intuition and perfected through repetition.
The result of a deep dive into Smith’s archive, this exhibition
reckons with the crucial position of this artist in the history of
photography, and in the institutional memories of both The
Museum of Modern Art and The Studio Museum in Harlem.
MoMA was the first institution to acquire Smith’s work (in 1979),
and the Studio Museum has shown Smith’s work since the
beginning of her career, when she was the first female member
of the trailblazing Black photography collective the Kamoinge
Workshop. Bridging the distance between the present and
the past, Projects: Ming Smith creates a photographic portal
through which to encounter
Smith’s images anew. It highlights how her pictures collapse
the senses, encouraging us to attend to the hue of sound, the Installation view of Projects: Ming Smith, on view at The Museum of Modern
rhythm of form, and the texture of vision. Art, New York from February 4, 2023 – May 29, 2023. Photo: Robert Gerhardt.

192 WORLD of ART