Michael Luke

Lionel Batiste of the Treme Brass Band

It seemed fitting that a man who immortalized second lines in photographs was celebrated with one of his own.  And so it was for Michael P. Smith, as hundreds gathered on a warm Saturday afternoon outside of the Sportman’s Corner at Second and Dryades Streets to pay their respects to one of New Orleans finest photographers.

It was appropriate that Smith’s second line began on a little too warm October afternoon, under sunny skies; it was appropriate that it began at the corner of Second and Dryades, where the Uptown Indians, especially the Wild Magnolias call home; it was appropriate that dozens of photographers showed up for the send off – his photos of Mardi Gras Indians produced a legion of New Orleans photographers, amateur and professional, and brings dozens to the city each year to find the culture he captured perfectly with his lens.

“He was my inspiration to do everything,” said Carolyn Long, a writer from Washington, D.C., “because he photographed it, he wrote about it, and I said, 'Gee, maybe I could do that too.'”

The New Orleans Police officers sat on their motorcycles looking on with boredom as people excitedly milled about talking and popping cold beers with old friends as a light hint of marijuana flowed in the air before the Treme Brass Band exited the bar and fired into “I’ll Fly Away,” starting the second line.

Smith died September 26 at the age of 71, but his legacy is huge in New Orleans, as one of the first that turned photographing second lines, Mardi Gras Indians on Super Sunday and Jazz Fest into high art – his photos were shown around the world from New Orleans to New York to Paris. 

And he was someone who photographed every Jazz Fest from the first in 1970 until he retired in 2004. His photos of Professor Longhair and James Booker are synonymous with the Fest and the New Orleans culture that he loved.

Michael Luke

As soon as the music began, Smith’s legacy was on display, as dozens of photographers crammed and cajoled to get the perfect shot of the paraders and the band, while people danced, waved yellow bandanas and held placards with Smith’s picture.

“He gave me the key to the darkroom,” said Matt Anderson, a photographer who met Smith at Tulane in 1969.

Anderson wasn’t sad at Smith’s passing. “This is part of the process,” he said, pointing at the band playing “Just Over in the Gloryland” and the paraders dancing in the streets. “It is what Monroe Edmundson (a Tulane anthropology professor) called the ‘Urban Folk Opera of New Orleans.’ That is what the outside world doesn’t understand about New Orleans.”

“That’s what we’re dealing with,” he said. “There was a Duck Lady before Ruthie; there were photographers before Mike; there will be photographers after Mike; there will be another Duck Lady in due time.”

The band thundered through the streets, leading the procession through Uptown to its final destination at Tipitina’s, where Smith was one of the original owners.

“In ’76, I started going to Indian practice and Mike would be there shooting, and then I started going out with the second lines and the brass bands and Mike would be there shooting,” said Nancy Ochsensehlager, who helped organize Smith’s second line.

Hundreds packed into Tipitina’s at the end of the second line. Tip’s, for a brief moment, was turned into a funeral parlor, as candles were lit on the stage, shedding light on a Dr. John photo that he had taken.

Michael Luke

Smith’s daughter, Leslie Blackshear Smith, mounted the stage and thanked everyone for coming. Amazed by the dozens of photographers snapping pictures, she told the gathers that her father would be embarrassed with all of the fuss created by the afternoon, but she beamed with pride, knowing why they were there.

“I think of the photographs that Mike took of the Mardi Gras Indians, back in a time when only a few photographers knew who the Indians were,” said Jason Berry, a writer, journalist and friend of Smith, to the crowd. “And I think, in a very real sense, he was present at the creation of a movement that brought people together, across lines of class and race.”

Berry said Smith lived his art, which is an achievement that very few attain in the life, going places that many never went before and capturing it and telling the vivid story with his camera.

A slew of speakers, like Berry, paid tribute to Smith.  Deacon John stepped to the microphone and paid his tribute, silencing the crowd with a moving acoustic version of Sam Cooke’s “Any Day Now," wailing, “There'll be no sorrow no sadness / Just only complete gladness / But any day / I know that I am going home.”

“A good jazz funeral is the end of a perfect death,” said Berry. It was a Jelly Roll Morton quote that Smith had told Berry years earlier. And his was a perfect death.