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Painting with Light: The Photography of Ming Smith
21 May-25 July 2020 -
Painting with Light
The Photography of Ming SmithPippy Houldsworth Gallery is delighted to present Painting with Light: The Photography of Ming Smith, a survey of New York-based artist, Ming Smith.
Containing works from the start of the 1970s to the present day, including a number of never before seen archival prints, the exhibition explores the painterly quality of Ming Smith’s photographic work.
From photographs taken in the New York neighbourhoods of Coney Island and Harlem, to the cities of Abidjan, Ivory Coast and Gambela, Ethiopia, the exhibition reflects the diversity of Smith’s personal experience, the openness of her perspective and her embrace of subjectivity as a fundamental conceptual choice.
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Smith’s use of the blur is a characteristic technique, often evoking a transcendent quality through soft hazy strokes of light and dark. Signifying an intentional rejection of her medium as a form of documentation, the blur highlights a dynamic and reciprocal relationship with her subjects.
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'One thing evident in Ming’s work (in conjunction with a total commitment to rendering black life) is her unmatched mastery of slow shutter speed photography. Ming is the absolute master of the blur.'
Arthur Jafa, A series of utterly improbably, yet extraordinary renditions, 2018
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Building on her painterly photographic language of black and white, at times Smith applies literal strokes of paint - abstract marks made with vibrant colour heighten or transform the emotional resonance of an image.
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'I wanted to capture the spirituality, the humanity of black people, my love for the culture'
Ming Smith, The Observer, 2020
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The works presented affirm the tenderness, respect and wonder with which Smith approaches each of her subjects. Community and family, with a particular focus on black family life, is at the heart of Smith's practice that celebrates its beauty and complexity.
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'Her work shows me how to pull poetry and spirituality out of the mundane.'
Tyler Mitchell, The Observer, 2020
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‘Smith’s evocative pictures summon up dreamlike states to tease out complex emotions and ideas deeply embedded in the places and consciousness of her subjects.’
Maurice Berger, The New York Times, 2017
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'Oh no, it’s all discovery, it’s all improvisation. It’s like when jazz musicians solo. They improvise, and photography is definitely that, for me.'
Ming Smith, Document Journal, 2019
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About Ming Smith
Ming Smith grew up in Columbus, Ohio 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 joint aim to challenge negative representations of black communities and to develop photography as an artistic practice. In 1975 she was the first African American woman photographer to have work acquired by The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Throughout her career she has travelled extensively, capturing life in America, Africa, Europe and East Asia.
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The artist’s work has been presented in exhibitions including Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, Tate Modern, London (2017), touring to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, (2018); Brooklyn Museum, New York (2018); The Broad, Los Angeles (2019); De Young Museum, San Francisco (2020); We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women 1965-85, Brooklyn Museum, New York (2017); Arthur Jafa: A Series of Utterly Improbably, Yet Extraordinary Renditions, Serpentine Galleries, London (2017), touring to Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2019); Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2010). A comprehensive monograph will be published by Aperture towards the end of the 2020. Smith will be included in Just Above Midtown, Museum of Modern Art New York (2022).
Smith’s work is held in the collections of Brooklyn Museum, New York; Detroit Institute of Arts; Philadelphia Museum of Art; National Gallery of Art, Washington; Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York; Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum, Washington; Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture, Washington; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
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Press
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Twin
22 July 2020A chat with Ming Smith - the photographer whose work is soft, intimate & bathed in community through its documentation of the black American experience. By Isabella Davey
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Artnet News
7 July 2020Photographer Ming Smith's dreamlike portraits of everyday life from Harlem to Ethiopia are the subject of a tender new online show - see them here. By Caroline Goldstein
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this is tomorrow
5 July 2020Review by Sheena Carrington
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The New York Review of Books
July 2020Sun Ra: 'I'm Everything and Nothing'. By Namwali Serpell
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i-D Magazine
2 July 2020Ming Smith's Life in Photos. By Ryan White
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Culture Type
30 June 2020On view: 'Painting with Light: The Photography of Ming Smith' at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery in London. By Victoria L. Valentine
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LOVE
23 June 2020How Ming Smith's powerful photographs documented an ongoing struggle. By Isabella Rose Celeste Davey
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The British Journal of Photography
11 June 2020Ming Smith: 'Light is Everything' by Hannah Abel-Hirsh
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Artforum
8 June 2020Critics' Picks. By Ian Bourland
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The Financial Times
30 May 2020In her images, family, culture and spirituality are illuminated through an evocative mix of blurred movement and double exposure. By Chris Allnutt
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The Observer
17 May 2020Photographer Ming Smith has been making pioneering work since the 1970s. Finally she is receiving the acclaim she deserves. By Candice Pires
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The Observer
17 May 2020In 1978, Ming Smith was the first African American female photographer to have work bought by MoMA. Her shots of black culture are enjoying a revival.
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The New York Times
13 April 2020For decades, the art world ignored artists of color - an institutional neglect it's now trying to correct. But in the 1960s and '70s, in Los Angeles and New York, three galleries led the way in showing the work of black artists, many of whom are now among the most influential of our time. By M.H. Miller
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Document
16 May 2019Ming Smith speaks on representation, improvisation, and photography as a form of survival. By David Aaron Brake
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Cultured Magazine
18 September 2018By Rebecca Bengal
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Aperture Magazine
2015Routinely excluded from the mainstream art world, in the 1960s, a group of African American photographers formed a collective to promote and exhibit their work. For one promising young artist, the experience was transformative. By LeRonn P. Brooks
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Exhibition List
