The Thousands

Spending time with Martin Smith‘s work is like pulling a warm, comfortable coat of nostalgia around your shoulders. It’s like wiping the dust off a shoebox of time-worn family snaps, and losing a good hour or two of your day mulling over memories. His work could be called sculptural photography; he gathers (rather than takes) photographs, and inscribes deftly-narrated personal anecdotes into them. Part diary entry and part recount, the unembellished honesty belies the poignancy of the content.

The stories are about the moments that don’t qualify as conventional milestones in our lives (the classic Kodak moments) – but are equally significant – trying cocaine for the first time, or a drunken overseas romp. Occasionally as you skip through the field of sun-drenched memories, you stumble across something unexpectedly sinister. Dark, subtle undertones announce their presence every now and then amongst the freedom and folly of adolescence. It’s humorous – like the time a young and near-pubescent Smith, understandably curious about the opposite sex, copped a punch in the face for nicking issues of People magazine from the local newsagent.

Perfect Price For Donny explores these themes, filtered through the eyes of Smith’s kids by the way of Smith’s own insecurities. You can’t help but be drawn into the work, and identify with the awkward, difficult and gleeful moments experienced by an adolescent Smith. They are haunting portraits that capture the poetry in the familiar and the everyday. Hop along to Smith’s new show, Perfect Price for Donny, to have a good ol’ reminisce, a laugh, and maybe even a tear or two.