Reverberating Forms

Photographer Michael A. Smith finds abstraction in unlikely places.

By: Diana Wolf
   Michael A. Smith failed art in high school and never took a photography course. In fact, during a Boy Scout photo demonstration at age 12, he thought an "acid stop bath" would burn. The Bucks County resident never imagined his photographs would achieve permanent residence in more than 100 museum collections throughout the United States, England, France, Germany and Japan.

"Canyon del Meurto, Arizona, 1991."

   His latest exhibit, Michael A. Smith: Landscapes, is closer to home. On view at the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, Pa., the show features 13 images from the museum’s permanent collection. The Michener owns nearly 50 of Mr. Smith’s photographs, taken in New Jersey, Arizona, Oregon, Utah, Louisiana and Bucks County, Pa. The exhibit runs through October 6.
   "Although they’re landscape photographs, they’re a fresh look at a lot of these landscapes," says museum spokesperson Elisabeth Flynn. "Some of them you wouldn’t recognize at first. He has such an eye for detail, and he captures qualities in the landscape that a lot of people might not see. He has a strong sense of unusual features of landscapes, things that may have been photographed hundreds of times before, but he manages to capture something fresh and unique in every photo."

"Near Aspen, Colorado, 1991."

   His trees stretch out like uncombed hair. Tree stumps become teepees in his composition. Rocks appear to ooze in one photo and bubble up in broccoli bunches in another. His abstract images swirl, scrape, stand up straight, slide, slip and roll, all part of Mr. Smith’s grand design.
   "I consider a photograph successful when the viewer’s eyes are compelled to navigate the entire picture space, rather than getting stuck on one point or object," Mr. Smith says. "Instead of a big object in its outline and form, there’s many little forms, relating all to each other, and hopefully reverberating and vibrating with each other."
   Innovative words and a bold outlook from a man whose life resulted from a random encounter with public television. Born in Philadelphia, Mr. Smith was exploring writing, painting, acting and other creative endeavors when he saw part of a program featuring the photography of Edward Weston. A close-up photo of a dead bird’s wing moved him, as did the accompanying words written by Weston: "This, then, to photograph a shaft of a pelican’s wing as if they were barbs of light in a night sky."

"New Orleans, 1986."

"New Orleans, 1985."

   "Before then," says Mr. Smith, "I never considered that a photograph could be something other than what it is of."
   In the following months, Mr. Smith recalls looking at the world as if he had a camera, "close-up things seen abstractly, like cracks in sidewalk, as if they already had frames around them." He bought a 35mm camera and plunged into photography. After a year, he quit his job teaching emotionally disturbed children to devote himself full time to the medium.
   His intuition paid off. He learned on his own, studying the works of other photographers, including Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Walker Evans. In 1967, he switched exclusively to 8-by-10-inch view cameras, later adding an 8-by-20 and 18-by-22 camera. Smith hasn’t made an enlargement since 1967, because these large cameras produce a negative the same size as the print. This contact printing produces sharper, clearer images.
   He traveled west, craving exposure. Photos in hand, he strode into the Art Institute of Chicago to showcase his work. This unorthodox method netted him a sale of four images for $25 each. Returning home, he then sold four to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and three to the Free Library. This confidence buoyed him to teach classes privately and for local colleges in his second year as a photographer. His work is also part of collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.
   In 1975, after nearly eight years of teaching photography, he quit to pursue his art full-time, with print sales as his only means of support. He traveled throughout the United States and Canada increasing his portfolio and has since photographed in every state, as well as Europe, focusing on Tuscany, Italy. His many awards include the National Endowment for the Arts Photography Fellowship in 1977, several artist-in-residence programs and many photography shows, including a 25-year retrospective of his work displayed in 1992 at the International Museum of Photography at the Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y. He also established his own publishing company, dispensing his art in high-quality books.

"San Gimignano, Tuscany, 1999."

   Mr. Smith’s pursuits take him away from home for half the year, time spent on the road traveling with his wife, also a photographer. There is no competition between this traveling duo. "We respond to different things," Mr. Smith says, "but sometimes we respond to the same thing in the same way, and I almost always say ‘Do you want to do it? Go ahead.’ Usually she does, except one time in Tuscany, the light was going, and we saw the same thing. I said, ‘Sorry, this one’s mine.’ "
   Mr. Smith sees his entire frame of vision as a complete work and has never cropped a photograph.
   "Everything is subject," he says. "As a photographer, I feel responsible for every square millimeter of the picture space in the same way a composer is responsible for every note or a poet for every word."
   The balance of these photographs — be it a tree blending into stone or bare tree trunks holding up the roof of the sky up in a picture that holds its breath — is exactly the experience Ms. Flynn says the Michener intended with this landscape exhibition.

"Atchafalaya Basin."

"Toledo Luncheonette."

   "The hope is to show some high-quality photographs and to make people reconsider the landscapes around them, particularly because so much of our collection of paintings is Pennsylvania landscapes and impressionist landscapes," she says. "This is a completely different take on landscapes through the photographic medium. It has a nice resonance with the museum’s larger collection. We’re so happy to have a contemporary artist and somebody who’s local and who has really made a name for himself. He’s a journeyman photographer…. We’re proud to have him on display here."
   Mr. Smith’s fond memories of the enchanting areas in Pennsylvania and New Jersey from his youth assured him that this is home. He settled in Ottsville, Pa., custom building and designing every detail of his studio home, right down to the door handles. "Being in the East is a wonderful base from which to explore out of," he says.
   The 60-year-old’s third book, the first photographic collaboration with his wife, The Bonsai of Longwood Gardens, is due out next year, with plans for books based on his Tuscany work. He is an authorized dealer for Kodak’s Azo paper, a highly desirable contact print paper of deep blacks and rich gray tones. He and his wife also teach two weekend workshops per year at their Bucks County studio, a home that will someday evolve into a museum, complete with a sculpture garden and photo archive.
   One item not in his future is a vacation. Since the couple’s marriage in 1990, they have vacationed only on New Year’s 2000, returning to the remote Arizona ranch where they honeymooned 10 years prior.
   "Other people would consider what we’re doing a vacation," he says. "We get to call it work and we can write it off."
   Not bad for a man who never took a photography course.
Michael A. Smith: Landscapes is on view at the James A. Michener Art Museum, 138 S. Pine St., Doylestown,
Pa., through Oct. 6. General admission costs $6, seniors $5.50, students $3; free to members and children under
age 6. Hours: Tues., Thurs.-Fri. 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m.; Wed. 10 a.m.-9 p.m.; Sat.-Sun. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. On the Web:
www.michenerartmuseum.org. For information,
call (215) 340-9800. Mr. Smith also will present a lecture, gallery talk and book signing Sept. 18, 7-8:30
p.m., free with museum admission, and a tour of his home and studio Oct. 5, 10 a.m.-noon. Pre-registration
required. Tickets cost $20 for Michener members, non-members $30. Michael A. Smith on the Web: www.michaelandpaula.com