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One Fine Show: “Ming Smith: Jazz Requiem—Notations in Blue” at the Portland Museum of Art

Two decades of the Detroit-born photographer's European work make the case that she was as much an artist as a documentarian.

The recent death of the great Martin Parr reminded us that the best practitioners of photography tend to maximize everything about the medium that makes it unique. Parr called his photos of devolving Britons “subjective documentary,” which is what I’m trying to describe: the nonfiction of the subject merges with the hand of the person taking the picture through lighting, composition, focus, etc. The recently closed exhibition by Ken Ohara at the Whitney Museum of American Art, in which he sent cameras to random homes in the 1970s, offers a much better look at the person behind the camera than whatever it is they’re shooting.

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