Photography from the LUAG Teaching Collection

Commissioned in 1989 by Broward County, Florida to document the district’s residents and environs, internationally acclaimed Bucks County photographer Michael A. Smith utilized his signature large-format camera to find a personal point-of-view. “The challenge always is to balance the allure of the subject matter with my own visual concerns and sense of abstraction,” writes Smith.

Michael A. Smith  BIO

Michael A. Smith, has been working in photography since 1966. Less than a year later, in 1967, he began photographing exclusively with an 8×10-inch view camera, committing himself to the contact print. Later he added both an 8×20 and an 18×22-inch view camera.

Michael A. Smith’s photographs have been exhibited widely and are in the permanent collections of over 100 museums worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and the Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto. Smith has received numerous grants and awards as well as commissions to photograph American cities. His first book, Landscapes 1975–1979, was awarded Le Grand Prix du Livre at the International Festival of Photography in Arles, France. His book, Michael A. Smith: A Visual Journey—Photographs from Twenty-Five Years, was published in 1992 on the occasion of his twenty-five year retrospective exhibition at the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House.  He lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania with his wife, the photographer Paula Chamlee.