Comments (0) |

Frames of reference

Rich Copley Herald-Leader Culture Columnist

Mike Smith was on a Tuesday morning mission to show a friend some peacocks on a farm along East Tennessee's Holston River.

He also knew he had a photo opportunity.

"I'd been there before and I knew it was gorgeous," Smith said, less than an hour after the visit. "And I was right. There was fog coming off the river this morning with sunlight poking through."

It was a moment that showed the East Tennessee State University photography professor's enduring love for the landscape surrounding him, and a more directed way of working.

"I used to just drive slowly on the back roads around here, when I first came to Tennessee," said Smith, who moved to Johnson City in 1981. "Now, I usually have a destination in mind."

As part of the Robert C. May Photography Endowment Lecture Series, Smith will be in Lexington on Friday to talk about his work in conjunction with an exhibit of his photos in The Art Museum at the University of Kentucky.

Smith's photos show a distinctly rural landscape, slowly changing with suburban development and businesses.

"You see new development adjacent to old farmlands," he said. "I parallel familiar, ordinary stuff with things like gas stations and material more corporate in nature."

One shot on Smith's Web site, www.mikesmithphotographs.com, depicts a customer in a fast-food restaurant and a long road and a rural white church in the window behind her.

Often, national chains don't allow photography in their establishments. Smith said he has been able to get into those places sometimes by getting permission at the corporate level, but he often succeeds just by how he approaches people.

"I have a manner that can sometimes be very persuasive," Smith said. "Being a professor at the college often helps, too, because people are more open to you if you're doing something for an educational purpose. I'll tell them, 'Really, this just has to do with the yellow and orange,' and they'll look at me like I'm insane and walk off."

That's a manner he developed while traveling those Tennessee back roads.

The drives remind the former Army brat of taking trips along the New England countryside with his dad on weekend afternoons.

Smith began taking pictures when he was serving in Vietnam.

"I didn't know it was a profession," Smith said. "I was working with heavy equipment and figured that's what I would do for a career."

But soon, he realized he wanted to be a photographer.

He came home and got a bachelor's degree from the Massachusetts College of Art in 1977 and a master's in photography from Yale in 1981.

Then Tennessee called.

"I was really attracted to the rich tradition of photography in the South," Smith said. "But soon, I realized that it wasn't the South, that Appalachia was different."

Smith said his tools and techniques have changed in the nearly 30 years that he has worked in the region. He still shoots on film: "I like the tactile aspect of analog photography. I understand film and film cameras, and I like them a lot."

In some ways, he is almost going in reverse of photography trends, now preferring to shoot with an 8-by-10 view camera instead of the roll film cameras he favored for years.

Smith's work is sold and exhibited around the world and has been published in The New York Times and Harper's magazine. He also has published a book of his Tennessee images whose title, You're Not From Around Here, reflects one of the reasons he said he is drawn to the East Tennessee landscape and loves to photograph it.

"I still view this place as exotic," he said, "and that helps me keep my interest up as opposed to having native familiarity."