Cedric Smith

By: Vince Aletti

May 2007

This 37-year-old with a history of exhibitions stretching back to 1997 can hardly be called

Cedric Smith, “Cotton Field #1,” 2006, UltraChrome print.

“emerging,” but all of Cedric Smith’s previous shows have been devoted to painting. This past month, following a successful sneak preview at Miami’s Bridge art fair, Dillon Gallery in New York mounted Smith’s first show of photographs (through May 5), and he’s being rediscovered in a new medium.

For some time now, the Philadelphia-born, Atlanta-based artist has incorporated vintage flea-market photographs into his paintings as a way of honoring African-Americans, often in product advertising of his own design.

Smith’s color photographs, all modestly sized and priced, feature the same sort of old-fashioned studio portraiture of black subjects, each vintage print pointedly re-photographed in front of a Southern landscape: A nervous-looking young man in his Sunday best is placed at a church’s entry, a startled child finds herself perched atop a fat cotton boll. They might be relatives or friends come home for a visit; Smith welcomes them back with tender concern—and a broad wink.