This photographer painted over frames, created double exposures, and made images with a dreamlike quality. She was the first African American woman to have her photos acquired by MoMA. She was influential in starting the Kamoinge Workshop in the 1960s, a collective of Black photographers in New York that continues to document their communities today. And she fully embodied the life of a well-rounded and intelligent artist. This is Insight for Inspiration: Ming Smith.

Ming Smith’s love for photography started as far back as kindergarten. Her father created art outside of his working hours, including home movies and photography. He bought her mother a Kodak Brownie, but since her mother rarely used it, Ming took the camera with her to her first day of school and made photographs she kept with her throughout her life. Her grandfather also shaped her understanding of color.

“My grandfather was a breath of fresh air to me. He was the one who taught me about color. He was a postman, but he also painted the exterior of houses, and he had a thing about color. The colors he would paint on a house, on the trim, would delight him, and he would say to me, ‘look at that color, really look at the color. Look at the whole house and then each part, each color.’ I started to become aware of color, and color combinations. I became aware of different hues of color.”

Her fascination with photography followed her throughout her life. She married a jazz musician and studied microbiology at Howard University, taking the only photography class available. Few of her early photos survive. Her mother accidentally discarded most of them, and she lost many rolls of film when a campus photographer promised to process them but never returned them.

After her time in D.C., Smith moved to New York. She worked as a model to support herself while pursuing photography. In 1973, she joined the Kamoinge Workshop, established in 1963. Anthony Barboza played a major role in her development, introducing her to the group. “Every time I went to Barboza’s studio, I learned a bit more. Barboza was a commercial photographer, and people used his darkroom, so there were people coming in and out all the time. It was a meeting place, a hub for creativity. And that’s how I met Lou Draper and Joe Crawford. Lou was the one who invited me to join Kamoinge, and Kamoinge was my introduction to photography as an art form. That was a major awakening.”

According to the Whitney Museum, “Kamoinge” comes from the Kikuyu language of Kenya, meaning “a group of people acting together.” Members met regularly to critique work, share technical expertise, and support one another. Smith said the critiques could be “really cold – cold blooded, ” but they pushed her to grow. Through Kamoinge, she learned about printing, group shows, lighting, and the wider world of photography.

Her project The Invisible Man, Somewhere, Everywhere was inspired by Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. From 1988 to 1991 she walked Harlem at night, using long exposures to blur figures into light and shadow. One passage from Ellison’s novel reflects the project: “light confirms my reality, gives birth to my form… without light, I am not only invisible, but formless as well; and to be unaware of one’s form is to live a death.

”Smith’s photographs are often described as dreamlike. Teachers once said she “daydreamed too much,” but she used creativity to escape pain she witnessed in her family. She said, “Part of getting through life is riding the tides. It takes effort, and I’m glad I kept going. When I was premed, I didn’t want to be a doctor. I was constantly taking photographs, but I never told anyone I had dreams of becoming an artist or a photographer, even when I came to New York.”

Her aesthetic is rooted in improvisation with light. “Dealing with light is the main focus and attraction. I do a lot of night shooting, and even in the dark, I look for the light – the way light comes in. In all my work I improvise with light, with what’s there. I feel my way through things, and I let the spirit guide me.” Her background as a dancer also influenced her: “It’s about always looking at lines and the quality of the movement. It’s about seeking energy, breath, and light. The image is always moving, even if you’re standing still.”

Smith also painted on prints and experimented with double exposures. “The jumping-off point for a painter is the blank canvas. For me, the print became the blank canvas, and I wanted to explore.” She linked this practice to her mother’s work tinting photographs. In her double exposures, she layered cultural icons into Harlem skies, saying of James Baldwin and James Van Der Zee: “They are part of us, part of Harlem, part of our ethos.”

Her 2006 series Transcendence, inspired by Alice Coltrane, was a way of creating art from the pain of racism and injustice she faced growing up. Music was another cornerstone. Married to a jazz musician, she toured with the World Saxophone Quartet, photographing in the mornings after long nights of music.

“I wanted to capture the spirituality, the humanity of black people, my love for the culture. Jazz musicians were celebrities around the world. They were loved, people identified with the music. So why then was black culture stereotyped as guys in the hood or poor folks on heroin?” Among her most striking jazz photographs are those of Sun Ra in 1978, made with long exposures and motion blur to echo the cosmic energy of his performances.

Smith’s career highlights include being the first African American woman photographer in MoMA’s collection in 1978, and later her inclusion in the 2017 Brooklyn Museum exhibition We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85. In 2023, MoMA hosted Projects: Ming Smith, her first solo exhibition at the museum.