Paige Wassel
Editor-in-Chief
On Monday night, nearly forty people gathered to hear ETSU
professor of photography Mike Smith discuss his photos of East Tennessee and
Appalachia that are currently on display in the Milligan College Art Gallery.
"My interest in photography has always been to photograph where I'm at," Smith said.
Alice Anthony, assistant professor of art at Milligan, said that she arranged for the show because Smith had been her teacher at ETSU, and she thought it would be good for her students to see his work.
Anthony said that she enjoys the colors in Smith's pictures as well as his use of light and shadows. "I like the way that he focuses in on familiar subject matter in a way that we don't see every day," Anthony said.
Smith has 14 photos on exhibit that show neglected buildings and rural life in vibrant color. Smith said that he enjoys focusing on themes in his subject matter such as hunting and the "lay of the land."
Smith said his intent was not to commercialize East Tennessee, and that he Guggenheim winner holds exhibit at Milligan thought his pictures revealed a "telling resourcefulness" in the way the subjects were put together aesthetically.
Sarah Daasch, a sophomore fine arts major, attended the talk.
"I thought that he had made it clear that he wasn't trying to exploit the area, but he was trying to show it in a loving way," Daasch said.
After finishing graduate course work at Yale University, Smith began teaching at ETSU in the department of Art & Design in 1981. The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation awarded him a fellowship in 2001 to pursue his own photography for a year.
Smith’s photos have been purchased by the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Chicago Art Institute. Smith's work has also been shown in the Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker and the New York Times.
"He made normal, everyday things seem more like art," Daasch said. Smith's exhibit is on display until October 10 in the Milligan College Art Gallery, which is located in the lower level of Derthick Hall.