Ming Smith makes history at MoMA

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 16 June 2023

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

In 1979, The Museum of Modern Art, (MoMA) purchased photographs from an African-American woman for the first time in its history. Ming Smith was famous for capturing her subjects with slow shutter speeds and using oil paints to layer colour onto her black and white photos. She worked as a model in New York in the 1970s, while pursuing her passion for photography and was friends with Grace Jones. Ming took a powerful image of Grace performing at the iconic Studio 54 nightclub in 1978 after meeting her at an audition. Ming was also a backing dancer in Tina Turner’s music video for What’s Love Got to Do with It, where she captured Tina glancing away from the camera, in front of Brooklyn Bridge wearing a leather skirt, denim jacket and patent stilettos with huge spiky hair. Ming speaks to Reena Stanton-Sharma about graduating with a degree in microbiology, modelling and struggling to make a living, and then becoming a famous photographer with a retrospective at MoMA in 2023. (Photo: Tina Turner, What’s Love Got to Do with It. Credit: Ming Smith)

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the witness history podcast from the BBC World Service with me, Reena
0:09.6	Stanton Sharma.
0:13.2	We're heading to New York in 1979 from one of the most influential museums in the world,
0:19.3	the Museum of Modern Art, brought photographs from an African-American woman for the first
0:24.9	time.
0:25.9	They wanted to purchase two, she told me a price, it's like maybe three hundred, something
0:32.9	like that.
0:33.9	I said, no, that doesn't even pay for my supplies, this is the Museum of Modern Art.
0:38.7	And she says, are you kidding me?
0:40.5	People try to give us artwork and we don't accept them.
0:43.9	That's the photographer Ming Smith, a fierce negotiator who drove a hard bargain.
0:49.5	Despite this, she would see her work displayed in the prestigious MOMA, the Museum of Modern
0:55.9	Art. She's famous for capturing her subjects with slow shutter speeds, giving a sense of
1:00.7	movement, she plays with light, and often uses oil paints to lay a colour onto her black
1:06.7	and white photos.
1:12.2	She was working as a model in New York City and taking photos on the side.
1:17.4	It was here that she took a powerful image of fellow model and singer Grace Jones in
1:22.6	1978, after meeting her at an audition.
1:27.3	Grace was always Grace Jones, she was always bigger than life.
1:31.6	People loved her, I remember with our conversation, she was leaving in a week to go to Paris to
1:37.8	see if she could make it over there with her singing, she became successful, and then
1:42.9	she came back and she called me and told me, I'm doing studio 54, bring your camera.
	...

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