Bayeté Ross Smith

In the Spring of 2021, Ross Smith began producing and publishing “Red Summers VR” with writer Jimmie Briggs and The Guardian US. Red Summers is a 360 immersive video series that examines the untold and under-told history of racial [domestic] terrorism in America from 1917-1921 (Red Summer, East St. Louis Race Riots, Houston Race Riot of 1917, Tulsa Race Massacre) through testimonials from [historians] and descendants of survivors and local community members.

In 2017, Ross Smith presented a TED talk about how USA has an opportunity to set a global example by honoring the diversity of its people and cultivating this resource as an asset. Ross Smith examined how the diversity of thought that comes from these cultural differences, is pivotal to a prosperous future.

As an educator, Ross Smith has been a faculty member at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts in both the Department of Photography and Imaging and the Open Arts Department since 2012. He was appointed the inaugural Artist-In-Residence at Columbia University’s Law School in 2021. He has also been a faculty member at the California College of the Arts, Parsons School of Design at the New School, St. Thomas University Law School, and the International Center of Photography.

Smith went to Amherst Regional High School in Massachusetts. For his undergraduate studies, he attended Florida A&M University from where he graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Photography in 1999. He obtained his Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in Photography from the California College of the Arts.

Bayeté Ross Smith (born 1976) is a contemporary African American multi-media artist, film maker and educator, working at the intersection of photography, film & video, visual journalism, 3D objects and new media. He currently lives and works in Harlem.

Ross Smith began his career as a photojournalist with the Knight Ridder working for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Charlotte Observer, and Tallahassee Democrat. He later began working with video, audio, multimedia, found objects, archival imagery, and installations. His work takes on elements of documentary and non-fiction storytelling woven with imagination and experimental visual representation. His work is in the collections of The Smithsonian Institution, the Oakland Museum of California, the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and The Brooklyn Museum. Ross Smith’s work has been exhibited in other countries including the Goethe Institute (Ghana), Foto Museum (Belgium), the Lianzhou Foto Festival (China), and America House (Ukraine), among others. His work has been published in numerous, media publications, books, and magazines, including The New York Times, The Guardian, PBS, National Geographic Learning, as well as Question Bridge: Black Males in America, "Dis:Integration: The Splintering of Black America" by Eugene Robinson; "Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present" and "Black: A Celebration of A Culture" by Deborah Willis, "The Spirit of Family" by Al Gore and Tipper Gore, among others.