Rangefinder Magazine Interview

PORTFOLIO : WWW.BRIANSMITH.COM

Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Brian Smith has been creating bold, graphic portraits of celebrities, athletes and executives for magazines and advertising for more than 25 years. Smith's photographs of famous and infamous faces of the noteworthy and notorious have graced the covers and pages of hundreds of magazines.

Brian Smith's first magazine photograph appeared in LIFE Magazine when he was a 20-year-old journalism student at the University of Missouri. Just five years later, Smith won the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography for his photographs of the Los Angeles Olympic Games. He was again a finalist for the Pulitzer for his photographs of Haiti in Turmoil. His photograph of Greg Louganis hitting his head on the diving board at the Seoul Olympics won first place in both World Press Photo and the Pictures of the Year competitions.

The Library of Congress featured a exhibit of his photographs from the 'Art & Soul' project as part of a star-studded gala. Smith has been featured on the cover of the Photo District News Portraiture Issue and in the Communication Arts Photography Annual, American PHOTO, Digital Photo Pro, Rangefinder, After/Capture and Pop Photo magazines.

Smith is a Sony Artisan of Imagery and a X-Rite Coloratti and has appeared on Fine Living Channel teaching a Little League Mom how to become a Big League Sports Photographer. His photography career began as a high school swimmer clearly not destined for the Olympics in the pool, yet this provided him with the opportunity to photograph swimming and other sports as a stringer for the Ames Daily Tribune.

Smith is President of Editorial Photographers, an organization of 2,000 of the top magazine photographers and newspaper photojournalists from around the world. He is frequently a speaker at photography seminars and to photo students at colleges, universities and art institutes around the country and can often be found on a flight headed to the Caribbean, Latin America or the American South from his home in Miami Beach, Florida.