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Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
BEUFORD SMITH (1941 - ) Man Crying/Martin Luther King Jr. Essay, 125th St. NYC.
Silver print, 1968. 184x114 mm; 7 3/8x4 1/2 inches. Signed, titled and dated in pencil, verso. From the artist's series Martin Luther King, Jr. Essay.
Other prints of this photograph are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist, with the studio stamp on verso; private collection, New York.
Taken on 125th Street and Lenox Avenue, Man Crying depicts the reaction to the physical assault of a white delivery person after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The subject cried, "please don't attack him, leave him alone" - echoing the non-violent ethos of Dr. King Jr. Beuford Smith's Martin Luther King Jr. series is an emotional set of photographs exploring the Black community's anguish the day after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Engaging the use of shadow, the subjects are enveloped by darkness, a metaphor for sorrow and loss.
Influenced by fellow Kamoinge members, specifically founding president Roy DeCarava, Smith adopted a documentary style with a concentration on Black urban life as the central theme and consistent confrontation of human emotion. He was a founding member and later served as president of Kamoinge, an organization founded to document and preserve the history and culture of the African Diaspora with integrity and insight for humanity through the lens of Black photographers. The name comes from the Kikuyu language of Kenya and means a group of people acting together.
Founder of Cesaire Photo Agency and the Black Photographers Annual (1973 - 1981), Smith is one of the great social documentary photographers that emerged from the 1960s. Self-taught, Smith was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. He taught photography at the Cooper Union, Hunter College, and the Brooklyn Museum. Smith received a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in 1990 and 2000, a Light Work Artist-in-Residence Fellowship in 1999, and an Aaron Siskind Foundation Fellowship in 1998.
