America Seen Through Stars and Stripes by Ming Smith

For more than four decades, Ming Smith has used her camera to capture Black life in all its complexity. She left her childhood home of Columbus, Ohio, for New York in the early 1970s after studying microbiology at Howard University. Her early career was marked by significant firsts: She was the first, and for many years the only, female member of the Kamoinge Workshop, an influential collective of Black photographers based in New York; and, in 1978, she was the first Black female photographer to have her work acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Still, only in the past decade have people begun embracing her unique perspective and style. Noted for her double-exposed prints and for collaging and painting on the surface of her photographs, Smith, now in her 70s, has never slowed down. In 2017, Carnegie Museum of Art acquired her striking 1973 picture America Seen Through Stars and Stripes. With its lone Black figure backed by American flags, this photograph is one of Smith’s most iconic. It sensitively addresses the complexity of U.S. race relations during a critical time in the Civil Rights Movement.