Marvin Smith

Marvin Pentz Smith was born on the sixteenth of February 1910 at Lexington, Kentucky, the son of Wade Hampton Smith — a Kentucky farm worker — and Sue Lavinia Smith. He was raised on the Smith family farm at Nicholasville, Kentucky and at the family relocation to Harlem, New York in 1933 — alongside his identical twin brother Morgan Smith (placed in this archive).

He completed the principal Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project art training at New York in 1935 — and studied painting at the Harlem Community Art Center under Augusta Savage from 1935 to 1937.

He co-founded with his twin brother Morgan Smith the principal M & M Smith Studio at 243 West 125th Street at Harlem in 1937 — the principal portrait and event-photography studio of the central Harlem entertainment district. The M & M Smith Studio operated at the West 125th Street address from 1937 to 1968.

He produced across the thirty-one years at the M & M Smith Studio — together with his brother Morgan — the principal portrait record of the principal Harlem entertainment community of the 1940s and 1950s. The Smith brothers were the principal Apollo Theater event photographers across the principal post-1939 Apollo Theater period.

The M & M Smith Studio produced the principal portrait record of the principal Apollo Theater personalities — including Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Lena Horne, Pearl Bailey, and the principal Apollo Amateur Night winners of the late 1930s and 1940s.

The Smith brothers were the principal documentary photographers of the Harlem street life of the 1940s — including the principal photographs of the 1943 Harlem riot, the V-J Day celebrations at Harlem of August 1945, and the principal post-war Harlem nightclub circuit.

Marvin Smith was the principal painter of the Smith brother partnership — and continued painting through the post-studio period at the Smith family residence in Harlem.

He was the principal subject of the principal Smith brothers retrospective exhibition of 1998 at the Studio Museum in Harlem.

He died at New York on the seventeenth of December 2003 of natural causes, at ninety-three.

He is honored here as the principal co-founder of the M & M Smith Studio at Harlem.