Following a highly acclaimed presentation at the Columbus Museum of Art, photographer Ming Smith's exhibition Transcendence is being made available as a traveling exhibition for circulation world wide.
For nearly five decades, Smith has charted a groundbreaking artistic legacy, including as the first woman member of the Kamoinge Workshop — the influential collective of Black photographers formed in New York in the 1960s — and later as the first Black woman photographer to have their work acquired by the Museum of Modern Art. Widely recognized for her portraits of Black cultural leaders, including James Baldwin, Grace Jones, and Nina Simone, Smith’s photographs conjure a vibrancy and aliveness akin to the rhythms of jazz and the blues, as the artist herself has noted. Smith’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Whitney Museum of American Art, among many institutions across the globe.
Transcendence surpasses the confines of traditional photography; it is a deeply intimate exploration of Ming’s reconciliation with her hometown. Inspired by Alice Coltrane’s transformative music, Ming’s series confronts the injustices of her racially divided upbringing in Columbus with compassion and insight.
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