Raymond Smith and Modern Memory

One of the singular joys of photography is its ability to put us in front of times and places we once knew but see no longer.

New Haven's Raymond Smith was active as a photographer in the South in the 1970's, producing a portfolio of compelling B&W images of places and people and things.

He now is about to have a show of this work, with the title In Time We Shall Know Ourselves, opening at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, in Alabama, this weekend, on June 14th,  up through September 21st, 2014.

The show will then travel to four other Southern museums, on a tour running through 2016.

Its next stop will be at the Hickory Museum of Art, opening October 5, 2014, with a reception and gallery talk on October 26th.

These images will also soon appear in a book with the title In Time We Shall Know Ourselves, published by Peter Falk, with essays by Richard H. King and Alexander Nemerov.

To get your copy, contact Peter Hastings Falk, Publisher, Rediscovered Masters, P.O. Box 833, Madison, CT 06443, or by email at peterfalk@comcast.net.

These images get the rural and small-town world of my youth just about right. Its good to see Smith's work getting the attention it deserves.

I do hope it is the case that in time we shall know ourselves. I'm not sure I'm there yet, but I do know these images evoke for me powerfully the world I'm from, and that's a help.