Morgan Smith
1910 — 1993 · Lexington-born American studio portrait photographer; co-founder with his twin brother Marvin Smith of the M & M Smith Studio at Harlem; principal Apollo Theater photographer of the 1940s and 1950s
Morgan Smith was born on the sixteenth of February 1910 in Nicholasville, Kentucky, one of identical twin sons of Charles Smith and Allena Hutchinson Smith, sharecroppers of that Bluegrass country. Born within the same hour as his brother Marvin, Morgan would remain his lifelong companion and creative partner, the two so alike in eye and hand that their photographs are often spoken of as the work of a single vision.
Drawn north to Harlem, the brothers committed themselves to photography in the late 1930s, studying for a time under the sculptor Augusta Savage. Morgan served as a staff photographer for the New York Amsterdam News and later The People's Voice, training his lens on the streets, gatherings, and dignitaries of a community in full flower.
In 1939 the twins opened the M & M Smith Studio at 243 West 125th Street, beside the Apollo Theater, where they became the theater's principal photographers through the 1940s and 1950s. Their portraits preserved the likenesses of Billie Holiday, George Washington Carver, Joe Louis, and countless others, alongside the everyday grandeur of ordinary Harlemites. In the 1950s Morgan turned toward film and television, working as a sound technician for ABC before retiring in 1975.
Morgan Smith died in New York in 1993, at the age of eighty-three. Through his patient, honoring eye, an entire people saw themselves rendered with beauty and worth — a legacy of dignity that endures in every frame he left behind.
References
- Morgan and Marvin Smith - Wikipedia
- Smith, Marvin and Morgan 1910–2003 and 1910–1993 | Encyclopedia.com
- Morgan and Marvin Smith papers, 1931-1999 - Archives | NYPL
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