Shreveport photographer, Thurman Smith,turns over his lifetime assortment of labor to LSUS

“Wow.”

That was Thurman C. Smith’s response to having his life’s pictures work accepted into the Northwest Louisiana Archives in a ceremony Thursday on the third ground of the Noel Memorial Library.

The 98-year-old spent seven many years trying via the lens beginning within the Nineteen Forties and is arguably the perfect photographer in Shreveport’s historical past.

“Wow” might additionally describe the response of head archivist Laura McLemore, who signed the settlement Thursday to deal with the Thurman C. Smith Photography Collection in a digital format and protect a key piece of Shreveport’s visible historical past.

“We’ve been looking forward to this for so long now because these photos are a marvelous visual history of our area,” McLemore mentioned. “Shreveport has been blessed with a lot of wonderful commercial and professional photographers, but (Smith) stands at the peak of those photographers.”

Smith Photography was a household identify within the Shreveport photograph enterprise with Thurman and his son Scot.

Aside from his studio work, Smith took images throughout Shreveport, capturing its historic locations and hidden gems all through the many years. The hundreds of images embrace aerial pictures of LSUS throughout its development and enlargement within the Sixties and Seventies, youngsters packed right into a report retailer and images of Shreveport’s skyline.

Scot Smith mentioned the artwork of pictures use to be much more than simply “mashing a button.”

“I had always admired my Dad’s work for its technical excellence,” Scot Smith mentioned. “There was a time when photography required extensive knowledge of cameras and lenses, factoring in light and balancing flash, a lot of chemistry involved in developing film, and a lot of optics and photographic paper in making a print.

“What these photographs represent as far as skill, craftsmanship and knowledge is unparalleled. It would have been a horrible mistake to have these photos end up in a landfill. I’ve been haunted by that possibility, but now that burden is off my heart and my dad’s life’s work has a home.”

The means of getting these pictures to the Northwest Louisiana Archives wasn’t so simple as taking a number of truckloads as much as the LSUS campus.

Twin Blends photographers Mark and Mike Mangham spent three years digitizing and curating the gathering from “hundreds and hundreds of boxes of negatives” so the Archives might home and show Smith’s work.

The assortment’s existence turned recognized “two days before the COVID-19 pandemic” closed down LSUS’s campus, however the Manghams, the Smiths and Archives workers finally reconnected and facilitated the gathering’s digitization and donation.

“We’re very honored to have been able to do this, and the (NWLA Archives) trained us to be where we’re at now,” Mike Mangham mentioned. “We went through this process with the Robert Menasco Collection, and it culminated in this project. … Thurman C. Smith put his life into this work, and these photos are very historic. There are thousands of incredible photos, and we have a hard drive that has 1,500 folders filled with high-definition photos. This man has basically saved Shreveport history.”

Smith thanked the Manghams, his son Scot, and the Archives for his or her work within the preservation of his work.

Smith’s images has been featured within the Twin Blends in style social media marketing campaign, that includes a photograph of Shreveport previously in comparison with a present-day photograph of the identical place.

Smith’s huge quantity of images are accompanied by photos from Film Arbor Studios, which dates to the Twenties. He acquired these images in a 1953 merger with the photograph ending firm, which on the time was a part of Woody’s Camera World, which had digital camera shops throughout town and area.

“What a wonderful gift not just to LSUS but to Northwest Louisiana,” mentioned LSUS Chancellor Robert Smith. “The Northwest Louisiana Archives will maintain this incredible collection in perpetuity. … As a relative newcomer to the city, it’s wonderful to look back and see what this city looked like 40 and more years ago.”

The Archives will current a portion of the Thurman C. Smith Photography Collection in an exhibition within the spring.

Interested in seeing historic Shreveport images now?

The Archives is displaying an exhibition titled “Lens on the Past, Local History in Photographs” via early October. Images begin within the late 1800s and progress all through the many years as they wrap across the third ground atrium.

The Northwest Louisiana Archives is a wealthy repository of historic paperwork, manuscripts and images totaling greater than 1,000 collections that element the historical past of the Red River area.