The late photographer Michael P. Smith was on of the first people I met when I moved to New Orleans in 1982, through our mutual friend Thorny Penfield. This article was published in the early 2000s in Beat Street. Thorny and Michael’s daughter, Leslie Smith, assisted with the interview, since Michael was then suffering from Parkinson’s Disease, and speech was difficult for him. I saw Leslie at a party, and she told me she didn’t have a copy, which is why I’m sharing this now, long overdue.

 

For the last  35 years, photographer Michael P. Smith has been as much a part of the Jazz Fest as anyone. Moving from stage to stage with his camera, he has documented thousands of Jazz Fest moments—the inspired, the outrageous, the humorous, the sublime. His 1991 book, New Orleans Jazz Fest, A Pictorial History, is full of unforgettable images—Stevie Wonder jamming with the Meters, Dizzy Gillespie taking a turn at Bongo Joe’s home made drums, James Booker with a very young Harry Connick Jr.

But more than that, for more than 30 years, he has been a chronicler of South Louisiana’s ethnic culture, particularly that of black New Orleans. Though always trying to be unobtrusive to his subjects, Smith’s photographs and essays have advocated for the value, depth and beauty of that culture, powerfully and persuasively.

Smith’s own upbringing couldn’t have been more antithetical to the world to which he would later be drawn. Born into a well-to-do family, raised “in the middle of Metairie,” he was educated at Country Day School and a New England prep school. The Naval Academy at Annapolis proved a poor fit for him, so he enrolled at Tulane University as an English major. He became interested in photography through Matt Heron, a local freelance photographer who lived near the Tulane campus.

In 1966, as a photographer for the Jazz Archives at Tulane, he began photographing jazz funerals and brass bands at second line parades, and he longed to know the people involved in them more in depth. He writes,

“Initially, I was most interested in the styles of the people and their recreations, and in the character and imagination I found in small, ramshackle houses and businesses…the expressions of individualism and freedom I saw everywhere, despite extremely depressed economic circumstances.”

It was in this spirit that he began photographing the outside of Spiritualist church buildings. Eventually, someone came out and asked him what he was doing. He says, “They asked me a question, and I must have given the right answer, because they invited me inside.”

Smith was interested in music of all kinds, and during the same period he was documenting the exploding rock culture of the day—Jimi Hendrix at Tulane Stadium, the Allman Brothers at the Warehouse, Ike and Tina Turner at City Park. He also shot peace demonstrations, rock festivals, and police crackdowns on hippies. Much of that was lost, however, when his studio flooded. Smith and his daughter Leslie worked furiously for days to save what they could. Choices had to be made, and music and culture won out over politics.

As Leslie Smith remembers, “Mike shot energy. His interest was in passion and uniqueness—it didn’t really matter what culture it was coming from. It was the inside of New Orleans, the special, unique New Orleans, but the whole thing was happening at the same time—churches, street parades, music, white and black culture, different styles.”

Michael Smith began exhibiting his work in galleries by the late 1970s, and by the 1980s, it was appearing in museums. He has exhibited at the Museum of American History, and The Smithsonian Institution, and his work is part of the permanent collections at the Bibliotheque National in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Historic New Orleans Collection, and other museums and archives. He has published five books: Jazz Fest Memories, Mardi Gras Indians, New Orleans Jazz Fest: A Pictorial History, Spirit World: Pattern in the Expressive Folk Culture of African-American New Orleans, and A Joyful Noise: A Celebration of New Orleans Music.  In addition he has won two Photographer’s Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and numerous other awards.

Though his pace has been slowed by Parkinson’s Disease, Smith continues to write and take pictures. He currently has two non-fiction books and a fictional screenplay in the works. His daughter Leslie Smith, an up-and-coming songwriter and busy vocalist in her own right, has become his darkroom assistant and archivist of his work. She finds that she is reconnecting with her own childhood memories, accompanying her father to music and cultural celebrations, as together they bring the images she remembers to life in the photographs.  In this way, his own family life reflects the continuity and value of tradition he has tried to document in his work. This year, she will be taking time out from her schedule to assist her father full time at the Fairgrounds.

Writing in his 1983 book, Spirit World, Smith notes that the end of segregation, as well as other changes, have brought about new opportunities for appreciation:

These changes in our society bring a great opportunity to recognize the value of ethnic diversity and traditional cultures so we can all benefit from their collective genius and creations.

Probably no event has brought the opportunity to appreciate traditional New Orleans culture to more people than the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. As one who was there from the beginning, Smith says, “In New Orleans, it evolved naturally.” He does have concerns, though, that having helped put New Orleans culture on display, some people who seek it out don’t show the proper respect. In an October 2001 interview with Jason Berry for Gambit, he said, “There was a gradual increase in outsiders, tourists–I’m not sure how I feel about that. A beautiful tradition should be shared with outsiders, but some tourists don’t have the ability to truly understand it. That’s why I did Spirit World — to help outsiders understand the religious side of this city.”

It’s a fact of life that one can’t always see one’s visions realized in exactly the way that one would hope. Nonetheless, Michael P. Smith has succeeded in realizing his better than most. He has brought New Orleans culture to the world, and brought respect and some degree of better financial opportunity to communities that nurtured it. This year, same as always, he will be at the Jazz Fest with his camera.