[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 17]
[Senate]
[Pages 23638-23639]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   REMEMBERING MICHAEL PROCTOR SMITH

 Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, today I wish to celebrate the 
life of Michael Proctor Smith, who passed away at his home in New 
Orleans on Friday, September 26, 2008. He was 71. Michael, a native of 
New Orleans, was an award-winning professional freelance photographer 
who chronicled the music, culture, and folklife of New Orleans and the 
State of Louisiana for over 40 years.

[[Page 23639]]

  Michael was well known for documenting New Orleans social club 
parades and jazz funerals, neighborhood traditions, Mardi Gras Indians, 
spiritual church ceremonies, and many of the city and State's renowned 
jazz, blues, rhythm and blues, and gospel musicians. He was a fixture 
at every New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival since it began in 1970 
until his retirement in 2005. His works are internationally recognized 
and are permanent collections at a number of museums including the 
Bibliothque National in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the 
Smithsonian Institution, the Historic New Orleans Collection, the New 
Orleans Museum of Art, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and the 
Louisiana State Museum.
  In the last few years, Michael had been honored with numerous awards 
celebrating his work. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the 
Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities in 2002 and was named Music 
Photographer of the Year by Offbeat magazine. In 2004 he received a 
Mayor's Arts Award from the Arts Council of New Orleans and a Clarence 
John Laughlin Lifetime Achievement Award from the New Orleans/Gulf 
South chapter of the American Society of Media Photographers. In 2005, 
he received the Delgado Society award from the New Orleans Museum of 
Art, the first photographer to be so honored. The recipient of two 
Photographer's Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, 
Michael's prints have toured worldwide through the U.S. Information 
Agency.
  Michael's photographs grace the covers of many CDs and record albums, 
illustrate numerous books and magazine articles published in America 
and Europe, and are a staple of documentary films on the rich cultural 
history of New Orleans and Louisiana.
  He was also an original owner and founder of Tipitina's, an iconic 
music club located at the corner of Napoleon Avenue and Tchoupitoulas 
Street in uptown New Orleans.
  Michael is survived by his partner Karen Louise Snyder; his brother 
Joseph Byrd Hatchitt Smith; two daughters, Jan Lamberton Smith and 
Leslie Blackshear Smith; and three grandchildren, Chance King Doyle, 
Leslie Elizabeth Doyle, and Francis Brandon Arant.

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