New Orleans photographer Michael P. Smith, whose work chronicled the city's cultural, musical and folk traditions for more than four decades, including 34 Jazz & Heritage Festivals, died Friday. He was 71.
"He defined the look of Jazz Fest," festival producer Quint Davis said in 2004, when Smith's friends and colleagues organized a tribute at the festival to mark his retirement.
A New Orleans native, Smith documented the traditions of the city's Mardi Gras Indians, jazz funerals, second line parades, social aid and pleasure clubs and spiritual churches throughout his legendary career. His photos also document the careers of countless New Orleans musicians of all genres, performing in large venues and neighborhood clubs, including Tipitina's, the iconic club of which he was an original owner.
"When I'm out there on the streets or in a club, I'm enjoying myself in the authentic environment of New Orleans culture, but I'm also acting out an obsession with documenting as much as I can about the music," Smith said in 1995 Times-Picayune article.
A Jazz Fest fixture
Smith's photographs of every Jazz Fest from its debut in 1970 until his retirement in 2004 form a priceless archive of that important event, from its humble beginnings in Congo Square to its status as a major musical and cultural happening, not to mention a multimillion dollar economic engine. When Smith retired in 2004, the festival mounted a retrospective of his work, which is also chronicled in five books released by Pelican Publishing, three of which deal with the music scene: "New Orleans Jazz Fest: A Pictorial History," "A Joyful Noise: A Celebration of New Orleans Music" and "Jazz Fest Memories," written with Jazz Fest co-founder Allison Miner. Pelican Publishing also published a book of Smith's Mardi Gras Indian photos and photographs chronicling the traditions of black spiritual churches.
Smith and his camera were fixtures at Jazz Fest, so much so that writer Chris Waddington commented in a 1995 story that Smith had become "the subject of good-natured jokes from fellow photographers who claim that they can't take a picture at the Jazz and Heritage Festival without getting the back of Smith's head in the frame."< /p>
Writer Doug MacCash shared a similar sentiment, in a 1999 review of a Smith photo retrospective.
"He's always there, in fact, at every big R&B concert you can remember, going back to the early '70s. And you've seen him elsewhere around town, too: at the costume contests on Mardi Gras, on Super Sunday at Bayou St. John when the Mardi Gras Indians gather, and at any jazz funeral you ever saw pass by. He's everywhere. He's Michael P. Smith a self-styled urban anthropologist."
Work nationally recognized
In 2007, the Historic New Orleans Collection purchased Smith's vast collection of photographs. Over the years, his work was exhibited locally and nationally with major exhibitions. A partial list on his web site ( ) lists shows at the at the Museum of American History (Smithsonian Institution), the International Center for Photography in New York and the LeRoy Neiman Gallery at Columbia University, as well as the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans.
Smith, who earned two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, has his photographs in the permanent collections of the Bibliotheque National in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian Institution. Locally, his work is included in the holdings of the Historic New Orleans Collection, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and the Louisiana State Museum.
His work earned him accolades from local and national arts organizations, including a lifetime achievement award from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, a Mayor's Arts Award, and the Clarence John Laughlin Lifetime Achievement Award from the New Orleans/Gulf South chapter of the American Society of Media Photographers. In 2005, he received the Delgado Society Award from the New Orleans Museum of Art. He was the first photographer to be so honored.
Smith is survived by his partner of more than 30 years, Karen Snyder, a local writer, producer and documentary filmmaker; as well as two daughters. In recent years, Smith's daughter, Leslie Blackshear Smith, worked to preserve his legacy as the city's preeminent documentary photographer.
A memorial celebration is planned but no details have been finalized.
