Bayeté Ross Smith
Bayeté Ross Smith is a photographer, multi-media artist, filmmaker, and educator living in New York City. He began his career as a photojournalist with the Knight Ridder Newspaper Corporation. By combining elements of photojournalism, social documentary, editorial portraiture, and Hip Hop culture, he examines the performative and quotidian dimensions of human identity, interactions, and beauty. Utilizing his experience in these areas to function as both a multi-media artist and a visual anthropologist, Ross Smith employs the language of these disciplines to speak directly to common, everyday issues and themes in society.
Ross Smith has exhibited his work nationally and internationally, with the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Brooklyn Museum, the Oakland Museum of California, MoMA P.S.1, the Missouri History Museum, BRIC Arts gallery, Rush Arts Gallery, the Leica Gallery, the Goethe Institute (Ghana), and Zacheta National Gallery of Art (Poland), among others. His collaborative projects "Along The Way" and "Question Bridge: Black Males" have shown at the 2008 and 2012 Sundance Film Festival, respectively. His work has also been featured at the Sheffield Doc Fest in Sheffield England and the L.A. Film Festival.He has also been involved in a variety of community and public art projects with organizations such as …
Bayeté Ross Smith is a photographer, multi-media artist, filmmaker, and educator living in New York City. He began his career as a photojournalist with the Knight Ridder Newspaper Corporation. By combining elements of photojournalism, social documentary, editorial portraiture, and Hip Hop culture, he examines the performative and quotidian dimensions of human identity, interactions, and beauty. Utilizing his experience in these areas to function as both a multi-media artist and a visual anthropologist, Ross Smith employs the language of these disciplines to speak directly to common, everyday issues and themes in society.
Ross Smith has exhibited his work nationally and internationally, with the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Brooklyn Museum, the Oakland Museum of California, MoMA P.S.1, the Missouri History Museum, BRIC Arts gallery, Rush Arts Gallery, the Leica Gallery, the Goethe Institute (Ghana), and Zacheta National Gallery of Art (Poland), among others. His collaborative projects "Along The Way" and "Question Bridge: Black Males" have shown at the 2008 and 2012 Sundance Film Festival, respectively. His work has also been featured at the Sheffield Doc Fest in Sheffield England and the L.A. Film Festival.He has also been involved in a variety of community and public art projects with organizations such as the Jerome Foundation, Alternate Roots, The Laundromat Project, the city of San Francisco, the city of Atlanta, the Hartford YMCA and the San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency.
Ross Smith’s accolades include an International Center of Photography Infinity Award for New Media, FSP/Jerome Fellowship, A Blade of Grass Fellowship, fellowships and residencies with the McColl Center for Visual Art, Charlotte, North Carolina, the Kala Institute, Berkeley, California, the Laundromat Project, New York, NY and Can Serrat International Art Center, Barcelona, Spain. He is currently the Associate Program Director for KAVI (Kings against Violence Initiative), a violence prevention non-profit organization in New York that has a partnership with Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn.
Maus Contemporary, Birmingham, AL