LESSONS from LEADERS: Arthur "Bud" Smith

One of the greatest communication tools of the modern age has nothing to do with paper, pens, pencils, typewriters, computers or artificial intelligence.  It’s photography and a picture is really worth a thousand words.  Photos can speak to you whether you see them or take them; whether they’re in black and white or 21st color; blurred and damaged, unplanned or staged and professionally composed.  Photos freeze time.  Videos are able to record and replay history. But photos still have the power to create additional images in your mind.

So imagine the legacy of someone who has a collection of more than one million pictures. The photographer, Bud Smith can make this statement and his pictures include one-of-a-kind shots of people such as Mohammed Ali, Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5, Maynard Jackson, Lionel Richie and the Commodores. He’s snapped shots of momentous events such as the funeral of legendary civil rights icon and former United States Congressman John Lewis. In addition, he also has photographed  the homegoing ceremonies for almost every one of Lewis’s peers.  This incredible accumulation of photos also has shots of Atlanta’s first ticker-tape parade, which was for Richard Nixon and sports photographs from the beginning days of the Atlanta Hawks basketball team and a five-year chronology of aerial photos showing how Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport was built .

This edition of TELLING OUR STORY allows Bud to explain how his pictures live up to the title of this series.  He has a lifetime of interactions with people whom most of us have only seen on big and small screens, in newspapers and magazines.  Bud had the unique experience of actually providing the pictures we saw.   He worked for the Atlanta Daily World which was a Black owned newspaper, owned by a Republican family.  Johnson Publishing employed him for decades, as did individual record companies who had him follow big-name stars.

Bud’s stories in this episode chronicle both his life and the cultural development in the United States through photos taken of leaders, exceptional performing artists, once-in-a-lifetime events, sports and architecture.  The insights he shares through his lens are the only thing more impressive than his memories of taking incredible pictures.