Ming Smiths poetic and experimental images are icons of twentieth-century African American life.

One of the greatest artist-photographers working today, Smith moved to New York in the 1970s and began to make images charged with startling beauty and spiritual energy. This long-awaited monograph brings together four decades of Smiths work, celebrating her trademark lyricism, distinctively blurred silhouettes, dynamic street scenes, and deep devotion to theater, music, poetry, and dancefrom the Pittsburgh Cycle plays of August Wilson to the Afrofuturism of Sun Ra. With never-before-seen images, and a range of illuminating essays and interviews, this tribute to Smiths singular vision promises to be an enduring contribution to the history of American photography.

Co-published by Aperture and Documentary Arts

Ming Smithwas born in Detroit and raised in Columbus, Ohio. A self-taught artist and former model, in the 1970s, she published her early work inThe Black Photographers Annual. Smiths work has been collected by and presented in major museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York; Brooklyn Museum; National Museum of African American History and Culture, and National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC; and Serpentine Galleries, and Tate Modern, London. Beginning in 2017, her work was included in the celebrated traveling exhibitionsWe Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965 85andSoul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, as well as in Arthur Jafas exhibitionA Series of Utterly Improbable, Yet Extraordinary Renditions, which traveled from London to Berlin, Prague, Stockholm, and Porto, Portugal. In 2019, Smiths solo exhibition with Jenkins Johnson Gallery was awarded the Frieze Stand Prize at Frieze New York. Smith lives and works in New York.

Emmanuel Idumais a writer based in Lagos, Nigeria, and New York. A contributor to publications, includingAperture, theNew York Review of Books,BOMB, andBritish Journal of Photography, he is the author ofThe Sound of Things to Come(2016) andA Strangers Pose(2018). He was associate curator for the inaugural Nigerian Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale.

Janet Hill Talbertis a jewelry designer and former book editor living in New York. A publishing industry veteran who spent more than two decades as an editor, Talbert served as vice president at Doubleday and founded the African American book imprint Harlem Moon.

M. Neelika Jayawardaneis associate professor of English at the State University of New York at Oswego, and research associate at the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre, University of Johannesburg. Her work has appeared inAperture,Frieze, andAl Jazeera English, among other publications, and she is a founding member ofAfrica Is a Country.

Namwali Serpellis author of the novelThe Old Drift(2019) and has written for theNew Yorker,New York Review of Books,n+1, and theGuardian, among other publications. She is associate professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley.

• Hardcover:236 pages
• Publisher:Aperture (November 10, 2020)
• Language:English
• ISBN-10:1597114820
• ISBN-13:9781597114820
• UNSPSC Code:55101500
• Product Dimensions:8.5 x 10.6 inches
• Shipping Weight:1.7 pounds