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Michael P. Smith, a renowned photographer who helped spearhead the New Orleans cultural awakening of the 1960s and 1970s, died at home after a long illness on September 26. He was 71.
Perhaps best known for chronicling the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival from its inception in 1969 until 2003, Smith also documented scores of local cultural events, many of which had previously been ignored by the general public. According to David Houston, curator of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, “Michael began shooting when so much of the important music was still fresh and noncommercial. Many of his photographs of musicians at work convey the excitement and the immediacy of the moment and are now classics. Other bodies of his photographs document the energy of New Orleans unique street culture and spiritual traditions. He had the eye of a photojournalist, the observant spirit of an anthropologist, and the soul of an artist. His body of work stands as both an historical document of an important era of New Orleans culture and a tribute to those he photographed.”
Smith received countless awards and recognitions from national and international bodies, and in 2007, the Historic New Orleans Collection purchased Smith’s archives, which consist of tens of thousands of slides, photographs, negatives and audio tapes.
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“It’s an extremely important body of work,” says Jude Solomon, the assistant curator at the Historic New Orleans Collection who is coordinating a Michael Smith exhibit, tentatively scheduled to open in March 2009. “It’s not just his photographs; we have filing cabinets full of notes, contracts and correspondence. He was one of the founders of Tipitina’s. He also went to Cuba in 1984 with Harry Belafonte, and none of his photographs from that trip have ever been published.”
A graduate of Metairie Park Country Day School and Tulane University, Smith’s life calling began when he was hired as Tulane’s jazz archive staff photographer in the mid-1960s. He would later admit in interviews that photographing Paul Barbarin’s funeral in 1969 inspired him to further document New Orleans black culture.
“Michael was really the first person to expose and investigate that aspect of New Orleans,” says fellow photographer, Owen Murphy. “He was a privileged kid from Uptown and very liberal-minded. Michael was fascinated by black culture and the music of New Orleans.”
Murphy also pointed out that not only was Smith blessed by often being in the right place at the right time, he was also a very talented photographer.
“Certainly content was first with Michael, but he had a very good sense of movement and gesture. He was also extremely dedicated. His work was his life. In the pantheon of photographers, he would be at the very top.”
Smith leaves a companion, Karen Louise Snyder and two daughters, Jan and Leslie.
