Bradley Smith was an American photographer, publisher, and author. He is remembered for his photography work, some of which is contained in more than twenty books.
Background
Bradley Smith was born on June 30, 1910, in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. His father worked as a railway telegraphist.
Smith’s sister, Evelyn Monroe, was an activist of Laguna Beach during the Great Depression.
Education
Bradley Smith began to work early in his life, first by selling the hides of armadillos that he killed. He developed an interest in photography at the age of twelve while he lived in Karnes City, Texas. He developed his skill taking photos of ranchers and cowboys who visited the town.
Career
Putting to the side his armadillos “business” Bradley Smith managed as a child, the start of his mature career can be counted from the service at the New Orleans Item-Tribune magazine from 1924 to 1927. For the next four years, he was advertising manager of Godchaux’s Department Store in New Orleans.
Smith also did such jobs as a vacuum cleaner salesman, a waiter, a magazine publisher, and a soft-shoe dancer before turning to freelance photography in 1942. He received national popularity for his captures of sharecroppers applied to Roy Stryker's Farm Security Administration project. Assignments for Life, Time, American Heritage, Saturday Evening Post, and other magazines in many of which he managed to serve both as a writer and a photographer followed.
During the course of his professional path, Smith photographed many famous subjects, including Mahatma Gandhi, Billie Holiday, and Harry S. Truman. In 1944, he gathered other photographers to form the American Society of Magazine Photographers, which was intended to ensure that those behind the camera received certain rights. Later, the organization became the American Society of Media Photographers.
The middle of the 1950s was marked for Bradley Smith by the publication of his first book. A 1954 volume ‘Escape to the West Indies’ was followed by other writings focused on a variety of themes, from erotica and wildlife to the art of foreign countries. In a couple of years after the debut publication, Smith served as president of the Gemini-Smith publishing company, based in New York City and La Jolla, California. In 1969, together with a Russian-born American photojournalist Jerry Cooke, Smith established another organization, the picture agency, ‘Animals Animals’ which is known nowadays under the title ‘Animals, Animals/Earth Scenes’.
Quotations:
"Never give an editor a picture that you don’t want him to print."
"You should never do a job for less than the people around you."
Interests
Music & Bands
jazz
Connections
Bradley Smith was married to Mara Vivat, also a photographer. The family produced three sons, Steven, Terrence and Michael, and a daughter, Sharon Hernandez Smith.