“I want my photographs to tell stories. And I want stories that come from moments of life, like a still from an old movie. Movement and pain and the simple joys of being alive are frozen in time. Only a glance is needed to read the lines between people and find the story.”
Heather Evans Smith is a North Carolina photo-based artist whose work reflects her southern roots, motherhood, womanhood and a whimsical imagination she relied on as an only child in a rural town. Her photographic imagery explores the ideas of memory, loss and family in conceptual settings.
Smith’s work has been featured in publications including The New York Times and Oxford American, and exhibited in venues such as the Fox Talbot Museum in Lacock, England, and the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. She is a Critical Mass Top 50 recipient (2014, 2018, 2021, and 2024), a 2022 Silver List artist, and the recipient of the CENTER 2022 Me&Eve Grant.
Her first monograph, Seen Not Heard, was published by Flash Powder Projects in 2016, followed by two self-published monographs, Alterations and Blue. Her latest monograph, Skipping Sundays, will be published in early 2026.