We the People

The death of his father is one of the things that propelled recently retired professor Steven G. Smith to his latest photojournalism project, a study of people across this country and what unites them that was partially funded by the Carnegie Foundation. “My dad always inspired me to be civil and not to judge other people,” says Smith, who watched his father in his recent final years “really wrestle with all of this incivility.”

The way for Smith to better understand what was behind the divisiveness in this country was second nature. “Photography and storytelling, journalism in general, does that for me,” he says. “It’s an opportunity to learn about things that I need to learn about.”

Smith spent a good chunk of his childhood in Lagos, Nigeria, attending the international school where his father taught. Surrounded by kids from dozens of countries, he was fascinated by the different cultures, and his dad consistently urged him “to see beyond those cultural and tribal judgments that pop into our minds at the click of a finger.” But there was another equally important piece of how his dad raised him in Lagos that helped nurture the Pulitzer Prize–winning photojournalist. “It was his adventurous spirit, you know? I’m in Lagos, Nigeria, a very big city that was just coming out of the Biafran War. And I played street soccer. I could have been one of those kids that was inside, protected because your parents worried about you. It was a judgment on his part to let me experience life.”

His dad never stopped reinforcing the same overarching themes “of not judging, not being condescending, of reaching out, helping, interacting,” says Smith.

It’s a formula he recognizes in all great reporters and photographers. “We want to earn people’s respect, to earn the right to tell somebody’s story. And to tell their story well at a high level, you need to have rapport. And rapport can’t happen with judgment or condescension.”

A motto Smith has lived by since he first heard it at age 25 comes from the late social documentary photographer Sebastião Salgado, who said, “Photos aren’t taken, they’re given.”

“And stories aren’t taken, they’re given,” adds Smith.