Beuford Smith, Photographer Who Chronicled Black Life

 

 

 He was a prominent member of the Kamoinge Workshop, a collective that nurtured Black photographers at a time when they were marginalized by the mainstream.

"On April 5, 1968, the day after Dr. King was killed in Memphis, Mr. Smith brought his camera to Harlem. One photo he took that day was of a Black man enveloped in darkness, weeping as a white delivery man was being beaten on 125th Street. In an interview with the Cincinnati Art Museum in 2022, Mr. Smith said that the anguished man in Harlem was saying, “Please don’t attack him, leave him alone.”
 

Mr. Smith’s picture of the crying man, which he called one of his favorites, was part of a series taken that day. Among the others were images of a white police officer grabbing a Black man by the shoulder as he pushes him forward during the violence that erupted after the assassination; an officer, in silhouette, watching a fire burn on the street; a branch of the Black-owned Freedom National Bank, with a portrait of Dr. King resting on a funeral wreath behind the front window; and a Black man, shown from behind, holding a bag of groceries and leaning on a mailbox, appearing possibly staggered by the news.

Other of his notable images from the 1960s and ’70s include a little girl, her face in shadows, posing defiantly against a wall; a little boy holding an umbrella that has lost its canopy; and an eager-looking man clutching a small bouquet of roses, perhaps a gift for someone."  

 read the obit By Richard Sandomir

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