Bayeté Ross Smith

Activist, Artist, Change agent, Concerned citizen, Educator/Teacher, Entrepreneur, Filmmaker, Idea generator, Journalist, Life mentor, Parent, Photographer, Producer, World traveler

Bayeté Ross Smith is a photographer, multi-media artist, filmmaker, and educator living in New York City. He is represented by beta pictoris gallery/Maus Contemporary. Bayeté is a member of TED Residency class three and an inaugural POV NY Times embedded media maker collaborating with both institutions while embedded at The NY Times. Bayeté’s 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. He has exhibited internationally with the Goethe Institute (Ghana), Foto Museum (The Netherlands), and Zacheta National Gallery of Art (Poland), among others. His collaborative projects "Along The Way" and "Question Bridge: Black Males" have shown at the 2008 and 2012 Sundance Film Festival, respectively. His work has also been featured at the Sheffield Doc Fest in Sheffield, England and the L.A. Film Festival. Bayeté's accolades include an International Center of Photography Infinity Award for New Media, a TED Residency, a FSP/Jerome Fellowship, an Embedded Media Maker selection supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, fellowships and residencies at the McColl Center for Art and Innovation, the Kala Institute, and the Laundromat Project. He has also been involved in a variety of community and public art projects with organizations such as the Jerome Foundation, BRIC Arts Media, The Amistad Center, The Laundromat Project, the NYC Parks Department, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, the Hartford YMCA, and the San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency. His work has been published in numerous books and magazines, including Question Bridge: Black Males in America (2015), Dis:Integration: The Splintering of Black America (2010), Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present (2009), Black: A Celebration of A Culture (2005), The Spirit Of Family (2002), SPE Exposure: The Society of Photographic Education Journal, Black Enterprise Magazine, and Working Mother Magazine. In addition to his fine art practice Bayeté is currently the Associate Program Director for the Kings Against Violence Initiative (KAVI), a hospital and school based violence prevention organization in New York that partners with Kings County Hospital. He is a faculty member at the International Center of Photography and New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.

Art + Media. Visual journalism. New Media. Multi media. Installation Ar. Music. HipHop. Jazz. Counter Culture. Activism. Advocacy. Improvisation. Youth development and mentorship. Violence prevention, though I am not a pacifist. History. Education. Collaborative story telling. Oral history. Cultural exchange. Public speaking. The concept of family. Prison reform.

What actually makes the U.S.A. great is that it is essentially blessed with every talent, intellectual perspective and mode of creativity known to humanity. This is because their are members of virtually every culture on earth living and working in the U.S.A. but additionally there are uniquely American versions of those same cultures, that have evolved in the U.S.A. over centuries. The combination of Chinese and Chines Americans, Colombians and Colombian Americans, etc. equates to a wealth of human resources that is most likely unprecedented in human history. Unfortunately the value system of "whiteness" does not allow for all of the U.S.A.'s citizens to full achieve their potential or fully contribute to a potentially great society. The U.S.A. has the unique opportunity to be one of the greatest societies in human history, by modeling a multi cultural, global inclusive society. This society would allow for everyone to contribute their ideas, perspective and talents towards progress and human evolution. But this opportunity is being squandered by the investment in an arbitrary value system that is solely based on what people look like. The U.S.A. is still a global leader, for better or worse. If it were to provide a model for a society that values all of it's residents regardless of physical features and the false concept of race, this would have global impact. Of course humans have always divided themselves based on arbitrary differences. Obviously religious discrimination, sexism and patriarchy, tribalism, etc. all predate the concept of whiteness. However collectively making it a priority to effectively move beyond whiteness as a value system, could set an example, and perhaps even a "domino" effect, in helping us move beyond other divisions that impact the productivity and progress of humanity. I truly believe this could be a critical step in opening the next great era of human intellect and " enlightenment".

Audio editing, curriculum development, Film and video, fine art, installation art, journalism, mentorship, new media, Photography, production, public speaking, transmedia, visual journalism, youth development

Songwriting. Cooking. Freestyling (Rhyming). questioning the validity of my own perspective.