Mickey Smith’s photographs of bound periodicals, combine the technical finish and compositional elegance of portrait photography with the contingency of the snapshot. They are still lifes of objects captured in the wild. The photographs are striking and ingenious, and they’re also surprisingly compelling in other ways. These are pictures that seem to have something to tell us.
At first, her images read as visual puns, comical ready-mades, moments of Zen—a frayed binding marked TIME, a scarred cover stamped LIFE. Sometimes, the pictures are nearly aphoristic: they seem to speak for themselves. MONEY begets MONEY. The first ENDEAVOR is a failed ENDEAVOUR. TOMORROW forever disappears into TODAY.
NATURE is a colorful, irregular profusion, unlike those rows of grim medical-school soldiers: SPINE, BLOOD, PROBE, CANCER, GUT. In a low-angle shot, begrimed volumes of THE METAL WORKER rise up like skyscrapers. Of DETAIL, we see . . . a detail. INTELLIGENCE comes in different forms, and among the COGNITIONs, a single on-button is lit. This one’s awake! Then there are the extinct species, fossils the artist has pulled from the tar pit of the past: THE LEISURE HOUR, WHO’S WHO IN COLORED AMERICA, WORK WITH BOYS.
Still, the last impression is not one of playfulness. This is partly because of aesthetic choices the artist has made about color and scale (neither readily appreciated in reproduction). But it’s also because the works resonate with the history of photography. They do something that only photographs can do, and, in doing it, they have something to say about the subject named in the title. They are pictures about the study of words.
The wit in Smith’s photographs is classic photographic wit. These pictures are records of intersections—whether from chance or design no one can say—between matter and meaning, and this is one of the feats that photography performs. Verbal wit plays with meanings hidden in words and phrases; photographs play with significances hidden in the visual field. In the flux and welter of the world’s stuff, the camera finds temporary pockets of coherence, accidental patterns, fugitive symmetries. A man leaping over a puddle reproduces his own silhouette, perfectly, upside down. Nobody planned it. Before photography was invented, and before there was film fast enough to snatch the image out of the ether, probably nobody would even have seen it.
Not all photographs are serendipitous in this way, but serendipity is the life of photography. Photography’s claim on the fortuitous and the unstaged as art is its claim to distinction as a creative medium. We talk about novels and paintings as “representations”—as copies, or transformations, of real things. Most of the time, this is a fiction. There is no Emma Bovary; there are only the words Flaubert put on a page. But there really was a man jumping over a puddle in the Gare Saint Lazare in 1932. And the books in Smith’s photographs really were on a shelf in a library somewhere. This is something we understand, instinctively, when we look at any photograph—that what we are seeing in it once was. Alive or dead? we ask about the man in the photograph. We don’t ask that about Picasso’s nudes.
One important thing about the images is their found-ness. The photographs are taken from life; they’re not made from props in a studio. The artist was on library safari.
Excerpt from Visits to the Pyramids by Louis Menand
BIOGRAPHY
BORN: 1972, Duluth, MN, USA
LIVES: Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland
EDUCATION: Diploma in Jewellery Design, Hungry Creek Art & Craft School, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland (2019); Bachelor of Arts in Photography, Minnesota State University Moorhead (1994)
AWARDS: Macalester College Artist-in-Residence, St. Paul, MN 2023-2024; Obscura Foundry Commission Award 2022; Creative New Zealand Grantee 2016, 2017; Public Art Year in Review, Americans for the Arts Project Winner 2010; PV Studio Residency, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico 2010; LMCC Manhattan Community Arts Fund Grantee 2009; Florida Pubic Art Permanent Commission Recipient, University of Florida 2009; CEC Artslink Artist-in-Residence, St. Petersburg, Russia 2008; Contemporary Art in Traditional Museums, St. Petersburg, Russia 2008; Society for Contemporary Photography Artist-in-Residence, Kansas City, MO 2007; Photolucida Top 150 Critical Mass Photographer 2006, 2007; FORECAST Public Artworks Public Art Affairs Grantee 2007; McKnight Foundation Artist Fellowship for Photography 2006; Oberholtzer Foundation Artist-in-Residence, Mallard Island, MN 1994-2004, 2007
COLLECTIONS: Museum of Modern Art Library, New York, NY; The British Library, London, UK; Center for Photography at Woodstock, Woodstock, NY; Dorsey & Whitney, Minneapolis, MN; Fidelity Corporate Art Collection, Boston, MA; Fredrickson & Byron, Minneapolis, MN; Jenny Metaverse DAO
Johns Hopkins Children's Center, Baltimore, MD; Macalester College, Saint Paul, MN; Miami-Dade; Public Library, Miami, FL; Minnesota Historical Society, Saint Paul, MN; Plains Art Museum, Fargo, ND; The National Library of New Zealand, Aotearoa New Zealand; Northland Collection, Saint Paul, MN; North Dakota Museum of Art, Grand Forks, ND; RAW DAO; Sheldon Muesum of Art, Lincoln, NE; University of Florida, Gainesville, FL; Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis, MN
UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS: Mickey Smith: Morphologies, Plains Art Museum, Fargo, ND March 2025; Domesticated, Sanderson Contemporary, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand, March 2025; Mickey Smith: Morphologies, Law Warschaw Gallery, Saint Paul, MN September 2024; Mickey Smith, Danziger Gallery, Online + AIPAD, New York, NY April 2024
SOLO EXHIBITIONS:
Architettura, CLAMP, New York, NY 2023; New Outlook, Sanderson Contemporary, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland (2022); Say When, Sanderson Contemporary, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland (2020); Mickey Smith, Jasmax, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland (2017); Cultivate it as you will… Te Tuhi, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland (2015); Harboured, Enjoy Public Art Gallery, Poneke Wellington (2015); Denudation, Invisible-Exports, New York, NY (2012); Tell You What, Land of Tomorrow, Louisville, KY (2011); Believe You Me, Invisible-Exports, New York, NY (2010); Collocations, Georgia College State University, Milledgeville, GA (2010); You People, Invisible-Exports, New York, NY (2008); Volume, Alvar Alto Library, Voyburg, Russia (2008); Contemporary Art in Traditional Museums, PRO ARTE Institute, St. Petersburg, Russia (2008); New Collocations, Center for Photography at Woodstock (2008); Forever Govern Ignorance, Carleton College Gould Library, Northfield, MN (2007); Mickey Smith: New Works, Kathy Dowell Art, Kansas City, MO (2007); BIO, Minnesota Center for Photography, Minneapolis, MN (2006); Volume, Open Book, Minneapolis, MN (2005); In the Stacks, Minnesota History Center, Saint Paul, MN (2005)
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITOINS: BannedGordon Parks Gallery, Metropolitan State University, Minneapolis (2024); Summer Show Veronique Wantz, Minneapolis (2023); Banned Traffic Zone Center for Visual Arts Minneapolis (2023); Between Digital + Tangible The Billboard Creative Los Angeles (2022) Obscura NFT Art Biennial European Cultural Centre Venice (2022); Summer Group Show Sanderson Contemporary (2021); Offsite Royal Jewellery Studio (2020); Summer Showcase Sanderson Contemporary (2019); Graduate Exhibition Hungry Creek Art & Craft School; As You Will Depot Artspace (2018); Requiem for the Bibliophile Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara (2014); A Different Kind of Order: The ICP Triennial Photobook Installation (2013); International Centre for Photography (2013); 50 Gifts for 50 Years Sheldon Museum of Art (2013); The Unseen Eye Blue Sky Gallery (2012); Bloodyminded The Wye (2012)
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY: Mickey Smith speaks at Pecha Keucha Auckland. Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 19 April 2023, https://vimeo.com/861132300; Mickey Smith artist talk at CLAMP. 11/2/23. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQ2TG4jWRKI&t=419s; Dr. Grant Scott, Podcast: A Photographic Life featuring Mickey Smith, United Nations of Photography, Podcast: episode 216, 22/6/22; ‘An in-depth Q&A with artist Mickey Smith on her thought-provoking exhibition New Outlook’, Denizen, 15 March 2022; Matheson, Maddy. Interview: Pull Focus with Mickey Smith. Art Collector Online, 10 March 2022, https://artcollector.net.au/video-pull-focus-with-mickey-smith/; Ezzo, Danielle. TIME&AGAIN: An Interview with Mickey Smith, Obscura Journal, 20 March 2022, Clark, Andrew. Exhibition Review: Matters of Time by Mickey Smith, PhotoForum, 1 October 2020; Devitt, Simon. (2020, 26 September) Interview with photographer Mickey Smith, Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/tv/CFlFrQRs731/; Freeman, Lynn. (2020, 13 Sepetember) Photographer Mickey Smith remembers “bound periodicals” Standing Room Only. Radio NZ. https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/standing-room-only/audio/2018763817/photographer-mickey-smith-remembers-bound-periodicals; McPhearson, Mary. Review of AS YOU WILL: Carnegie Libraries of the South Pacific, by Mickey Smith. PhotoForum online, January 2019; ‘Life is not always straightforward’ Polly Crockett, Arts Management Network,Nov 2019; ’Mickey Smith and the Carnegie Libraries’ Lynn Freeman, RNZ Standing Room Only, Sep 2018; ‘Photographer pays tribute to Andrew Carnegie.’ Wendyl Nissen, RadioLIVE, Sep 2018; ‘As You Will... Carnegie Libraries in the South Pacific’ Mickey Smith with essays by Charles Walker + Gabriela Salgado, published by Te Tuhi, 2018; ‘Harboured by the Harbour: An inn for tired travellers’ Jodi Meadows, Enjoy Public Art Gallery, Feb 2015; ‘Flash Forward Tenth’ hardcover by Magenta Foundation, 2014; ‘Architecture Glass Art’ Franz Mayer of Munich, 2013; ’50 Gifts 50 Years’ Sheldon Museum of Art, 2013; ‘Denudation’ Mickey Smith with essay by W.M. Hunt, published by Hassla, 2012; ‘Issue No.21,’ Unless You Will, 2012; ‘BLOOD’ hardcover by Trunk Books, 2012; ‘The Book that Changed My…’ GQ, Jun 2011; Postcard issue 2.12 with John Lamb, Abe’s Penny, Feb 2011; ‘Mickey Smith’ The Last Magazine, Oct 2010. Theme Magazine [Issue #23] edited by Marc and Sara Schiller, Jul 2010; Artist Project, Tod Lippy, ESOPUS [Issue #13] Oct 2009.
SOLO PUBLICATIONS: [Forthcoming] Mickey Smith: Volume with text by Louis Menand. Seeking Publisher. 2025; [Forthcoming] Mickey Smith: Morphologies. Published by Macalester College 2024
As You Will: Carnegie Libraries of the South Pacific. Published by Te Tuhi 2018
Deundation. Mickey Smith with text by W.M. Hunt. Published by Hassla 2012
RESIDENCIES: PV Studio, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico (2010); Contemporary Art in Traditional Museums, St. Petersburg, Russia (2008); Society for Contemporary Photography, MO, USA (2007); Oberholtzer Foundation, MN, USA (1994 - 2004, 2007)
ART FAIRS + BENEFITS: Aperture Foundation, Art Chicago, Art Platform Los Angeles, Artspace Projects, Aotearoa Art Fair, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Center for Photography at Woodstock, Dallas Art Fair, Frankfurt Book Fair, Magenta Foundation for the Arts, Minnesota Center for Photography, NADA Art Fairs in Miami, New York + Cologne, The New York Art Book Fair, North Dakota Museum of Art, PULSE Miami, SCOPE Miami, Silver Eye Center for Photography, VOLTA New York, Watermill Center