Born in Detroit, Michigan, Ming Smith grew up in Columbus, OH, and moved to New York in the early 1970s. There she worked with a wide network of fellow artists, musicians and dancers. She was the first, and for many years the only, woman member of the Kamoinge Workshop, a collective of African American photographers based in New York. The group formed with the aim of challenging negative representations of black communities and to develop photography as an artistic practice. In 1975 she became the first African American woman photographer to have work acquired by The Museum of Modern Art, NY. Throughout her career she has travelled extensively, capturing life in America, Africa, Europe and East Asia.
In 2023 Smith was honoured with the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award by the International Center of Photography (ICP), New York, and the Lucie Awards 2023 Achievement in Portraiture. She was also recently the subject of two major solo exhibitions: Projects: Ming Smith, curated by Thelma Golden, The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), NY (2023) and Ming Smith: Feeling the Future, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, TX (2023), travelling to the International African American Museum, Charleston, SC in 2024. Recent exhibitions include Black American Portraits, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), CA; touring to Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, GA and Mechanical Hall, Newark, DE (2021-23); The Power of Portraiture: Recent Acquisitions, The Nasher Museum of Art, Durham, NC (2023); BLACK VENUS, curated by Aindrea Emelife, Fotografiska New York (2022); Working Together: The Photographers of the Kamoinge Workshop, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (2020); touring to The Whitney Museum of American Art, NY (2020-21); The J. Paul Getty Museum, LA (2022); Cincinnati Art Museum (2020-22); We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women 1965-85, Brooklyn Museum, NY (2017); Arthur Jafa: A Series of Utterly Improbably, Yet Extraordinary Renditions (Featuring Ming Smith, Frida Orupabo, and Missylanyus), Serpentine Galleries, London (2017); and Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography, The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), NY (2010).
In December 2022, a new book, Ming Smith: Invisible Man, written by Oluremi C. Onabanjo was published as part of MoMA’s One on One series. Ming Smith: An Aperture Monograph, the first comprehensive publication dedicated to Smith, was published in 2020, featuring essays and interviews by Arthur Jafa, Greg Tate, Namwali Serpell, and Hans Ulrich Obrist.
Smith’s work is held in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, NY; Detroit Institute of Arts, MICH; J. Paul Getty Museum, LA; Philadelphia Museum of Art, PE; National Gallery of Art, Washington; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NY; Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum, Washington; Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture, Washington; The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), NY; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY.