Ming Smith (b. 1947, Detroit, Michigan) captures everyday life through a transcendent and ethereal lens. Her work has a collaborative nature, often featuring legends of the art, music, and literary world of Harlem and beyond. Smith documents everyday moments of Black life, whether it be legends such as Grace Jones and James Baldwin or an anonymous man on the street— she creates a dreamlike poignancy for every subject. Smith creates a deliberate blurriness with experimental post-production techniques such as double-exposed prints, which amplify the sacredness of ordinary Black life in her images. Additionally, Smith incorporates painting and collage in her works. Her mother was a painter, and this process of abstraction flows naturally as an extension of her imaginative eye.

’Little Brown Baby with Spa’klin’ Eyes’ is a part of Ming’s series ‘Invisible Man, Somewhere, Everywhere’, which depicts the child’s back to the camera, standing in a crib left out on the street. Ming embraced Harlem’s defiant and glamorous energy during the 1990s yet did not disregard its fragile edges, and legacies of pain and disregard.