| Michael A. Smith |
Ottsville, PA
1981/1981
Silver print
on original mount
7-3/8 x 19-1/2 in. (187 x 495 mm)
Signed and dated on mount recto. Provenance: artist; Dody Weston Thompson. See: Michael A. Smith, A Visual Journey: Photographs from Twenty-Five Years, n.p.Long-time Bucks County resident, Michael A. Smith, born in Philadelphia in 1942, has been working in photography since 1966. Less than a year later, in 1967, he began photographing exclusively with an 8 x 10-inch view camera, committing himself to the contact print. Later he added both an 8 x 20 and an 18 x 22-inch view camera. During his second year as a photographer, he began teaching his own seminars and workshops, but after seven and a half years, he stopped teaching to dedicate himself solely to the making of his photographs.His photographic journeys during the past 43 years have taken him to every state in the continental United States, western Canada, Mexico, and Europe. The results of these remarkable odysseys are included in the permanent collections of over 100 museums in the United States, Europe, and Asia, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Art Institute of Chicago, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. He has taught workshops in photography in the United States, Austria, Germany, Tuscany, Iceland, and Australia.His commitment to the medium has resulted in over 200 exhibitions. In addition, he has twice received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and he has been the recipient of major commissions to photograph five American cities. In 1981, Smith?s first book, the two-volume monograph, Landscapes 1975?-1979, was awarded Le Grand Prix du Livre at the Rencontres Internationale de la Photographie in Arles, France. At that time, the Swiss publication Print Letter commented that ?"for the first time in the 11 years of the Rencontres, a deserving book has won the book prize.?"In 1992, Smith was honored with a 25-year retrospective exhibition at the International Museum of Photography at the Eastman House in Rochester, NY. To mark the occasion, Michael A Smith: A Visual Journey?: Photographs from Twenty-Five Years was published.His first book of portraits, The Students of Deep Springs College, was published in the fall of 2000. His next book, Tuscany: Wandering the Back Roads?, Volume II was published in the fall of 2004.
Price: $2,500 Sale: $1,750 (ref. 13889)