Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2008 - (Page 23)

hen he took his last breath on September 26, 2008, the 71-year old photographer Michael P. Smith left an imposing legacy to image makers and historians. He was an artist, to be sure, though he was driven by an uncommon sense of history, one that lengthened as he grappled with the meanings behind the many pictures that he took. For more than 40 years, Mike Smith used his lens as a winding mirror on the African-American culture and music of New Orleans — jazz funerals, the practices and parades of Mardi Gras Indians, performers at the Jazz and Heritage Festival, folk life and the more secluded rituals of Spiritual Churches. That terrain was vast enough to swallow any number of hard-toiling photographers, intoxicated by the exotica of it all. Smith was nothing if not disciplined; the more he photographed, the more he was driven to read, trying to assemble an ethos, a moral idea of the history embedded in the images he captured. Out of his many travels through the city of his birth he forged a visual language, seeing the entwined culture of music and folk life — a culture sadly riddled with poverty — as an orchestrated story of the people about their common past. His 1994 book Mardi Gras Indians includes a long essay on the historical memory behind the black Carnival rites: In African consciousness the sacred and the secular are W BY JASON BERRY Emile Victor Clay Funeral, 1996 inseparable. Just as jazz combines disparate elements into a harmonious whole, jazz funerals merge church life with street life. They are rites of passage with profound spiritual resonances: more than just burying the dead and celebrating eternal freedom, they serve as a ritual of community affirmation. Smith was not alone in exploring the visual poetics of the churches and streets. Syndey Byrd, who roamed many of those arenas that engaged Mike Smith, works exclusively in color, registering a lush, stylized sense of vibrant beauty. Smith had the documentarian’s more straight-forward approach, best found in the black-and-white photographs he took. He was best known for having covered every New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival from the first one, in 1970, until 2003, when he had to stop because of a neurological disorder. The Jazz Fest work yielded some dazzling pictures and two books exclusively on the festival. Al Green, on stage, shirt off, radiating eros and energy. Clifton Chenier, bravura with a gleaming smile, cradling the accordion, his black hair curled back and behind him, a huge crowd ebbing into distant light. Chuck Berry with a leering grin, his forehead creased, leaning forward, all but taunting the lens, holding his guitar like a ramrod. The list goes on. Winter 2008-09/LOUISIANA CULTURAL VISTAS 23

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2008

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2008 Contents Friends Editor's Column Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Prospect.1 New Orleans The Historic New Orleans Collection The Enduring Performance of Michael P. Smith Jazz Notes Louisiana Foodways Birds of a Feather: Windfowl Carvings in Southeast Louisiana Louisiana Association of Museums Louisiana Architecture O. Winston Link in Louisiana The Ogden Museum of Southern Art The Colfax Massacre Louisiana State Museum Unlocking the History of Greek Key Architecture Bookstand Sound Advice Forum

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2008

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