SMITH by Christine Ollier

“SMITH was an artist from an early age”, as this expression so precisely states. We met a short time after he completed his degree with the National School of Photography in Arles. It was his second degree, and not his last. There had already been the two-year prep course, then the Master’s in Philosophy, and there would be the degree from Le Fresnoy in the following years. And during the last few years SMITH has made it into the Filles du Calvaire gallery, of which I have been Artistic Director for more than twenty years.
I discovered SMITH during a personal exhibition, which highlighted the sensitive approach of those around him. The portraits and landscapes in various formats, combined in the display, offered a delicate opening onto the young and fragile world of human beings evolving into their genre and identity.