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*Being well traveled should be markedly more valuable to a scholar than being well read. About the Artist While hitchhiking across the United States in 1978, Gary picked up a newspaper one morning at a truck stop outside Scotts Bluff, Nebraska and was inspired by an article he read promising cheaper international airfares under the new Airline Deregulation Act. That development, when blended with an inexplicable wanderlust, compelled him to decide right there and then to become a Global Street Photographer instead of the other less exciting things left available to him on his list of things he might become after getting badly mangled during a botched knee operation two years before.*** In 1979 Gary established his studio in Lawrence, Kansas, earning his undergraduate Photojournalism and News-editorial degree in 1984 from the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas. In between then and now, Smith has traveled to and practiced his street photography on location in more than 60 nations worldwide and in 1996 he earned a Master of Photographic Arts graduate degree after accepting and completing a teaching fellowship at Purdue University. In 1991 Smith was honored as one of the first winners of a prestigious American Photo Magazine competition in recognition of earlier work made during the Cold War inspired conflicts on the streets of Central America. In 2000 he repeated as an American Photo International Competition winner for his black and white study of the streets at the bottom of a volcanic eruption made in the Caribbean nation of Montserrat, and during that same year was cited by Black and White Online when it named the Gary Mark Smith www.Streetphoto.com Art Gallery website “One of the Top Ten Black and White Photography Web Sites on the Internet.” In 1999 Gary released his first street photography journal (Molten Memoirs) about life at the bottom of the volcano, and in 2000 the Traver Foundation of Kansas released a portfolio collection (Searching For Washington Square) of 145 of the artist's early street photographs from around the world. In 2007 he released an Online edition of his third book, a street photography journal about the first year after the 9/11 attacks --- including essays, rumors, field notes and photographs from his excursions to a still-smoldering Ground Zero in New York and a still-exploding Tora Bora in Afghanistan. In 2005 he photographed the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in Mississippi and documented the Flood of New Orleans from a boat expedition on Canal Street. In 2009 he released White With Foam about the streets of the post-9/11 world and he re-released a fourth edition of Molten Memoirs, both on Kindle. As his artist statement suggests, "Gary Mark Smith has (despite his reticence) become one of the most highly regarded global street photographers of his time. His artworks are found worldwide and are sought by the finest museums and most astute private collectors. When he's not zipping off to somewhere or other out in the world, Gary spends most of the rest of his time near his bungalow studio in Kansas and can most often be found there enjoying the company of his wife and friends; writing unusual books; watching KU Jayhawk basketball; bird watching out in the county; processing new streetphotos from his latest adventures; planning new adventures; issuing his online Streetphoto of the Week Exhibition; or playing with (and pretending to despise) his lunatic cats. *** What Makes Gary Work So Hard at his Art? Smith was born in the northeastern United States in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania on April 27,1956. His father was an executive at Bethlehem Steel Corporation, and his mother was a homemaker. He became interested in photography taking pictures around his family's farm near Virginville in the Saucany River Valley of Berks County, Pennsylvania (using pigs in costume as early subjects) and later when he was a sports editor and photographer of the student newspaper at Kutztown Area High School in Kutztown, Pennsylvania. While still in high school, he began taking pictures of daily life in Washington Square park in nearby New York City. A tragic upbringing that bottomed out by the end of his teens, shaped resilience as a consistent theme in his artwork. His mother committed suicide when he was in the fifth grade, a victim of what at that time was called "manic depression", an uncontrollable condition now known as "bipolar disorder". The subsequent lack of supervision led to Smith's developing into a self-reliant and fiercely independent person without much self doubt, traits that later allowed him to overcome his fears and achieve access to extreme streets in nearly any circumstance. In 1976, at the very end of his teen experience, Smith was abruptly disabled during knee surgery when swelling within a cast caused his nerve to be crushed from three inches above the knee through his left foot. This left him either in agony and/or on powerful painkillers for the rest of his life. In that condition, Smith decided that becoming a fine artist would be perhaps the only way to control his own schedule - - - the ability to work around all the effects of his condition as he say's; " without being absent, AWOL, or incompetent due to drug saturation or bouts of elevated suffering". And as a way to be sheltered in a passion strong enough that might provide him with about a hundred hours of pain-distracting relief per week. It is also an interesting notion (documented as part of his 1999 memoir Molten Memoirs) that twice during these already-tumultuous teens Smith was knocked unconscious in secondary lightning strikes, once when he was 15 and again at 19, resulting in later incorporation of the fury of nature into his global street photography method. Due to recovery from and adjustment to this unique set of circumstances beyond his control - - - - it took Smith a decade to achieve his undergraduate degree, eventually receiving a BS in journalism from the University of Kansas. Similarly paced by desire and circumstance rather than convention, he waited until he was 40-years old to receive a Master of Arts degree, the product of a full teaching fellowship provided by Purdue University. |
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