Gary Mark Smith | |
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| Born | April 27, 1956 Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Known for | Street photography |
| Website | streetphoto |
Gary Mark Smith (born April 27, 1956) is an American street photographer. [1] [2] [3] [4] Smith is noted for his pioneering global range and his empathetic and literal style of photography sometimes captured in extremely hazardous circumstances. [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]
Smith was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. His first photographs were taken while growing up on his family farm outside Kutztown. In high school, he began photographing street life in Washington Square in nearby New York City. [11] In 1984, he earned a Bachelor of Science in journalism from the University of Kansas in Lawrence. [12] In 1996 he earned a Master of Arts degree, the product of a full teaching fellowship provided by Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. [13]
Smith launched his career in Autumn 1978 and made street photography, blurring the line between journalism (documentary) and art. [14] [15] [9] His projects included:
Cold War
In 1990 he photographed the crumbling Iron Curtain including West Germany, East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands leading up to European and German Reunification, including celebrations in Prague and on October 3, 1990 in Köln (Cologne), Germany. [11] [16] [17]
In 1991 he photographed the streets of the collapse of the Soviet Union, as it dissolved. [18] [19]
Several expeditions to the Cold War inspired guerrilla wars in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, moonlighting as a journalist for the University Daily Kansan newspaper [20] and selling combat photography he made on the side as a freelance photographer to the Associated Press, United Press International and other agencies. [21]
"Molten Memoirs"
In September 1997, Smith gained access to the death zone of Salem, Montserrat in the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean, [22] [23] becoming one of the 200 volcano holdouts there who refused to leave until a near-fatal close call eruption of the Soufriere Hills Volcano on September 22, 1997 finally forced them to flee. [24] In February 1999 Smith released his first street photography book, a journal (Molten Memoirs: Essays, Rumors Field Notes and Photographs from the Edge of Fury) about his experience.
In July 2009, a portfolio of 45 photographs from Holdout Streets of the Montserrat Volcano Disaster was accessioned into the permanent collection of the Montserrat National Trust.
Tora Bora: An American Global Street Photographer's Post 9-11 View of the Streets of the Afghanistan/Pakistan Tribal Belt at the Time of Tora Bora.
Smith's Streets of the Post-9/11 World project including work from: Ground Zero in New York City; the Streets under the air war adjacent to the Battle of Tora Bora; [3] the streets of the Afghanistan/Pakistan border refugee camps; the streets of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in Pakistan at Peshawar; beyond the Khyber Pass (Mohmand and Khyber Agencies); and to the everyday post-September 11 attacks terror war streets of Las Vegas, Paris, and Lawrence, Kansas, his hometown and the only city in North America (Bleeding Kansas) established during a terror war (John Brown; William Quantrill), resulted in his third street photography book White With Foam: Essays, Rumors, Field Notes and Photographs from the Edge of World War III (2009).
The Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the Flood of New Orleans
On September 1, 2005 Smith was sent by the American Red Cross to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the flood of New Orleans, Louisiana, becoming a member of the Red Cross [25] first strike team, helping run undermanned rescue shelters in southern Louisiana on the outskirts of the Flood of New Orleans. During his service he photographed the Flood of New Orleans while on a cat rescue mission afloat down Canal Street and in addition photographed the extreme hurricane surge damage of nearly the entire Mississippi Gulf Coast Highway 90. In 2009, eight of the images were accessed into the permanent art collection at the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA). [26]
Sleeping in the City: Global Street Photography from Inside the Wire.
Smith has photographed in more than 85 countries on six continents. [27] His photographs (thematic and typically of the fashion, advertising, and particular place-defining urban elements of a location along with passing people) have been accessed into museum collections in North America, South America, and Europe. [28] [10]
Rocinha favela, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Between 2011 and 2014, Smith and partner Sarah Stern photographed the streets of the gang-controlled Favela Rocinha in Rio de Janeiro before the city's pacification of the favela. Smith went on to publish a book about the project called Favela da Rocinha, Brazil. He then continued photographing Rocinha alone as the gangs (post World Cup) retook control of most of the slum. [29] [30]
Goma, Congo
He embedded himself for 17 days inside the United Nations peacekeeping mission in North Kivu, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Photographed life on the streets of Goma, capital city of the ongoing Congo Wars; also photographing life in the Mugunga refugee camp on the flanks of Mount Nyiragongo volcano. [31] [9]
Smith had a difficult upbringing that ended badly, ultimately shaping resilience as a major theme in his artwork. His mother committed suicide, a victim of uncontrollable depression, when he was in the fifth grade, resulting in his development as a self-reliant and independent spirit unencumbered by self-doubt. He was knocked unconscious in secondary lightning strikes twice as a teenager, once when he was 15 and again at 19, resulting in later incorporation of the fury of nature into his global street photography method. [4] [24]
In 1976, Smith was abruptly disabled during a knee operation when insufficient room for swelling was left in the cast that was applied and his nerves were crushed from three inches above the knee all the way down through his left foot. This rendered him either in agonizing pain and/or existing under the influence of powerful opioid painkillers for the rest of his life. [32]
In 1978, while hitchhiking across the United States, Smith picked up a newspaper one morning at a truck stop outside Scottsbluff, Nebraska and was inspired by an article he read promising cheaper international airfares under the new Airline Deregulation Act. That development, when blended with an inexplicable wanderlust, compelled him to become an experimental fine art global street photographer instead of the other less exciting (more painful and less pain distracting) options left available to him. [26] [33]
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