Michael Proctor Smith

SMITH Michael Proctor Smith passed away at his home in New Orleans on Friday, September twenty-six after a long illness. Smith was a New Orleans native and award-winning professional freelance photographer. His special interest for nearly 40 years has been the music, culture and folklife of New Orleans and Louisiana. He is well known for documenting New Orleans social club parades and jazz funerals, neighborhood Mardi Gras traditions, Black Indian Tribes, Spiritual Church ceremonies, and many of the city and state's renowned jazz, blues, rhythm and blues, and gospel musicians. Smith photographed at every New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival since it began in 1970 until his retirement in 2005. He was honored in 2004 with a major grandstand exhibition and photo kiosks placed around the fairgrounds. Smith's photographs are in the permanent collections of the Bibliothèque National in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institution and, locally, the Historic New Orleans Collection, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and the Louisiana State Museum. Smith's work is represented through five photography books including Spirit World: Pattern in the Expressive Folk Culture of African-American New Orleans; A Joyful Noise: A Celebration of New Orleans Music; New Orleans Jazz Fest: A Pictorial History; Jazz Fest Memories; and Mardi Gras Indians. The latter is a visual and sociological history of the unique masking and musical traditions still alive in New Orleans' older black neighborhoods. In the last few years, Mike Smith has been honored with numerous awards. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities in 2002 and was named Music Photographer of the Year by Offbeat magazine. In 2004 he received a Mayor's Arts Award from the Arts Council of New Orleans and a Clarence John Laughlin Lifetime Achievement Award from the New Orleans/Gulf South chapter of the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP). In 2005 he received the Delgado Society award (New Orleans Museum of Art), the first photographer to be so honored. Through Center Austria at the University of New Orleans, working in collaboration with the Salzburger Museum Carolina Augusteum in Austria, a 40 image exhibition of his work and accompanying catalogue (Before the Storm: The Soul of New Orleans) began touring in Europe in the fall of 2006. Michael P. Smith photographs grace the covers of many CDs and record albums; illustrate numerous books and magazine articles published in America and Europe; and are in continual demand for documentary films produced at home and abroad. He has received two Photographer's Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and his prints have toured worldwide through the United States Information Agency (USIA) and the Louisiana State Museum. Professionally, he was a location assignment photographer for Black Star, the noted New York booking agency, for over 20 years. He is survived by his partner, Karen Louise Snyder, his brother, Joseph Byrd Hatchitt Smith, two daughters; Jan Lamberton Smith and Leslie Blackshear Smith and three grandchildren; Chance King Doyle, Leslie Elizabeth Doyle and Francis Brandon Arant. A memorial celebration of his life and work is being planned and will be announced when details are finalized. Smith was one of the original founders of the famed Tipitina's nightclub. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in his name to the Tipitina's Foundation.