Gary Mark Smith

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Gary Mark Smith (born April 27, 1956) is an American street photographer.

Smith is known for his pioneering global coverage and his empathetic and literal style of photography, which are often captured in extreme situations.

Early life and education

Smith, a native of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, took his first pictures growing up on his family's farm outside of Kutztown. He began photographing street life in Washington Square, a nearby New York City, in high school. He earned a BS in journalism from the University of Kansas in Lawrence in 1984. He earned a Master of Arts degree in 1996, the result of a full teaching fellowship at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.

Personal life

Smith had a difficult upbringing that ended badly, but he ended up focusing on resilience as a main theme in his art. When he was in the fifth grade, his mother committed suicide, a victim of uncontrollable sadness, resulting in his growth as a self-reliant and independent spirit unencumbered by self-doubt. He was knocked unconscious twice as a child, once when he was 15 and again at 19, resulting in the incorporation of the fury of nature into his global street photography technique.

Smith was abruptly disabled during a knee surgery when insufficient space was left in the cast, and his nerves were crushed from three inches above the knee all the way down to his left foot. He was either in agony or not existing under the care of potent opioid painkillers for the remainder of his life.

Smith picked up a newspaper one morning at a truck stop outside Scottsbluff, Nebraska, and was inspired by an article in 1978 that promised cheaper international airfares as a result of the newly deregulation Act. When combined with an inexplicable wanderlust, compelled him to become an experimental fine art global street photographer rather than the other less popular (more painful and less distracting) options he had available.

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Career

Since launching his career in Autumn 1978, Smith has become recognized as a pioneering global street photographer and has distinguished his method by blurring the line between journalism (documentary) and art. His projects included:

Cold War

Several expeditions to the Cold War inspired guerrilla wars in El Salvador and Guatemala and Nicaragua - moonlighting as a journalist for the University Daily Kansan newspaper and selling combat photography he made on the side as a freelance photographer to the Associated Press, United Press International and other agencies. His accounting of the Streets of Cold War Hot Spots garnered Smith a William Randolph Hearst Award nomination and in December 1991 American Photo magazine named Smith an American Photo Career Photographer in that publication's first ever honors competition.

"Molten Memoirs"

In September 1997 Smith gained access to the 'death zone' of Salem, Montserrat in the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean, becoming one of the 200 famous volcano holdouts there who refused to leave until a near-fatal close call eruption of the Soufriere Hills Volcano on September 22, 1997 finally forced the holdouts to flee. In February 1999 Smith released his first global street photography book, a journal (Molten Memoirs: Essays, Rumors Field Notes and Photographs from the Edge of Fury) about his experience. In November 2000 Smith was honored for his work in Montserrat as an American Photo magazine champion for the second time, as a winner of the “International Reader’s Competition”. In July 2009 a portfolio of 45 photographs from Holdout Streets of the Montserrat Volcano Disaster was accessioned into the permanent collection of the Montserrat National Trust.

Tora Bora: An American Global Street Photographer's Post 9-11 View of the Streets of the Afghanistan/Pakistan Tribal Belt at the Time of Tora Bora.

Smith's Streets of the Post-9/11 World project including work from: Ground Zero in New York City; the Streets under the air war adjacent to the Battle of Tora Bora; the streets of the Afghanistan/Pakistan border refugee camps; the streets of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in Pakistan at Peshawar; beyond the Khyber Pass (Mohmand and Khyber Agencies); and to the everyday post-9/11 terror war streets of Las Vegas, Nevada, Paris, France and Lawrence, Kansas, U.S.A., his hometown and the only city in North America (Bleeding Kansas) established during a terror war (John Brown; William Quantrill), resulted in his third global street photography book White With Foam: Essays, Rumors, Field Notes and Photographs from the Edge of World War III published online and in June 2009 released as a Kindle Edition.

The Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the Flood of New Orleans

On September 1, 2005 Smith was sent by the American Red Cross to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the flood of New Orleans, Louisiana, becoming a member of the Red Cross first strike team, helping run undermanned rescue shelters in southern Louisiana on the outskirts of the Flood of New Orleans. During his service he photographed the Flood of New Orleans while on a cat rescue mission afloat down Canal Street and in addition photographed the extreme hurricane surge damage of nearly the entire Mississippi Gulf Coast Highway 90. In 2009, eight of the images were accessed into the permanent art collection at the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA).

Sleeping in the City: Global Street Photography from Inside the Wire.

Although called an innovator of citizen journalism for his groundbreaking but risky historical access street photography technique, Smith has furthermore emerged among contemporary street photographers as the pioneer who advanced street photography to a global range. A lifetime mission documenting the streets of the world through his artwork has journeyed Smith to the streets of more than 85 countries on six continents. His photographs from these “everyday global café streets” (thematic and typically lime-lighting the fashion, advertising, and particular place-defining urban elements of a location adorned with the serendipity of the passing local throng) have been included in private art collections here and there throughout the world and many of the images have been accessed into important museum collections in North America, South America, and Europe.

Rocinha favela, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Lived in and photographed the largest gang-occupied favela in Rio de Janeiro before pre-World Cup “pacification” in 2011. Smith went on to publish a book about the project called Favela da Rocinha, Brazil and then re-entrenched himself in the slum for weeks at a time during the following three years to document the post-World Cup streets as the gangs slowly took back control of most of Rocinha's alleyways.

Goma, Congo

Embedded himself for 17 days inside the United Nations peacekeeping mission in North Kivu, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Photographed life on the streets of Goma, capital city of the ongoing Congo Wars that have taken the lives of more than 5.4 million since the Rwanda Genocide in 1993; also photographing life in the infamous Mugunga refugee camp on the flanks of Mount Nyiragongo volcano.

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