*Artist Statement
Driven
from his hiding place in Kansas by a puzzling wanderlust, Gary Mark Smith has
(despite his reticence) become one of the most highly regarded street photographers of his time {Snapshot
Resume}. Since 1982 he has faithfully lived up to his global
billing
by executing several extensive street photography field expeditions per year
(every year) out on the streets of more than 60 countries on six
continents. Although most of these journeys focus on hunting down and capturing visually bold and
intellectually stimulating candid moments at public gathering places (a
people-watching bystander stalking the poetry of everyday life out on the
streets) --- Gary may best
be known for photographing extraordinary and sometimes violent historical streets in their
times.
Occasionally it's during
breakouts of war and peace, or breakouts of fierce natural calamity -- or
streets in times of revolutionary transition and disarray. But
typically, when there is no history drawing him to its streets in it's
time, Gary wanders aimlessly around the globe in his own time. Hanging
around at outdoor cafes or on streaming street corners or on park benches --- willfully scouting for and
anticipating moments of fleeting street art.
Typically camping out in his tent on location at city campgrounds to save
money, thereby availing himself the lengths of time required abroad to
accomplish his dedicated task:
To
create a compelling global street photography portfolio during one artist's
lifetime revealing both the variety of culture and the similarity of spirit, infrastructure and order one encounters out on the seemingly chaotic streets of a single planet during one generation at the turn of a millennium where predominantly urban
people can be studied and photographed in the wild going about the task of
living out the leisure and bustle and sometimes grind of their everyday
public lives.
*Gary's camp on a covered outdoor music stage (called the Eric Clapton Stage because he'd played on it twice) at the Golden Arches Nightclub and Cafe inside the "Death Zone" during the Montserrat Volcano disaster in 1997. Three nights later at about 3:30am, an explosive eruption of the Soufriere Hills Volcano only three miles away rained red hot pumas onto the corrugated metal stage roof and into the audience courtyard, but none hit the tent with the artist inside...