Ming Smith: The Invisible Man, Somewhere, Everywhere

I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids, and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, simply because people refuse to see me. These opening lines to Ralph Ellison’s epochal novel The Invisible Man (1952) served as the inspiration for a series of photographs Ming Smith made from 1988 through 1991. One particularly poignant image from this series, rendered in monochrome, is a moody, indeterminate street scene. A sole figure occupies the center of the picture plane - head stooped, hands in pockets, striding down a snow-covered street. Illuminating the figure from behind, a line of street lights exposes the outer edges of legs and feet, while the torso and head encased in a bulky winter coat seem to blend into the shadow of a looming building. In formal composition and subject matter, The Invisible Man, Somewhere, Everywhere (1990) typifies Smith’s artistic concerns and long-term engagement with the structural and psychological tensions that animate the African-American experience. Reveling in Smith’s synesthetic range and acuity of vision, this latest volume in MoMA’s One on One series invites readers to perceive the subtle yet significant contributions of this Black woman photographer to the history of the medium during the twentieth century.