Background
Henry Holmes Smith was born on October 23, 1909, in Bloomington, Illinois, United States.
The Ohio State University
Illinois State University
One of the two lion statues (Kemeys, bronze 1893) flanking the Art Institute Institute's main entrances
Henry Holmes Smith was born on October 23, 1909, in Bloomington, Illinois, United States.
Henry Smith studied at Illinois State University in Normal (1927-1932), the Art Institute of Chicago (1929-1930), and Ohio State University, Columbus, where he received a Bachelor of Science in 1933.
Henry Smith has been an emeritus professor (since 1977) at Indiana University Department of Fine Arts, Bloomington; he taught there from 1947 to 1977. Henry Smith was associate editor of Minicam Photography, 1940-1942, and taught at New Bauhaus in Chicago, in 1937-1938.
Henry Smith was often involved in the cutting edge of photographic techniques: in 1931 he started experimenting with high-speed flash photography of action subjects and started doing colorwork in 1936 when few people considered it a serious artistic medium. His later images were nearly all abstract, often made directly (without a camera, i.e. like photograms), for instance, images created by refracting light through splashes of water and corn syrup on a glass plate. However, although acclaimed as a photographic teacher, Holmes' own photographs and other images did not achieve any real recognition from his peers.
At the end of his career, Henry Smith questioned the value of photographic education, noting that unlike, say, a medical degree, a degree in fine arts didn't lead to some useful role in society.