[ad_1]
After 32 years at HHS, and 38 years within the federal govt, our photographer Chris Smith is retiring. I will be able to talk for our complete HHS workforce once I say we’re going to omit seeing him round along with his digicam, and we’ll omit his presence.
He’s a well known identify round right here, recognized all through our development and around the federal govt.
In 3 a long time, he’s captured historical past and helped inform our tale to the country. He did extra than simply create peculiar pictures; he helped us file who we’re as other folks, and who we’re as a Division.
As a result of it isn’t simply the paintings we do, it is the people who do the paintings. And because of his willing eye, we have now an unprecedented file of what the individuals who’ve been a part of HHS have carried out for The united states over the past 32 years.
Chris began at HHS in September 1990 and has served below six administrations and photographed 9 HHS Secretaries. Sooner than that, he were given his advent to the government on the U.S. Division of the Treasury the place he labored below any other trailblazer and early Black photographer within the federal govt.
Chris’s father and better half’s father have been each Tuskegee Airmen and his father changed into a fireman in D.C., Chris’s place of origin. Chris attended Duke Ellington Faculty of the Arts and came upon his love of images via a summer season early life program and through enjoying round in his father’s darkish room.
Pictured right here: Chris Smith’s father, Theodore Paul Smith, in uniform as a Tuskegee Airman.
His paintings is featured within the Smithsonian—this image he took of buttons and lapel pins in fortify of our paintings to handle the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Chris has additionally taken numerous headshots, together with my very own, and 4 of his Secretary portraits these days grasp within the Nice Corridor the place they’re going to keep, enshrined in historical past.
That’s why I sought after to take a second and write a bit of about Chris, his lifestyles, and his paintings – it’s part of historical past. Historical past flows via us, and we turn into it. It’s one thing value celebrating, and one thing value retaining for long term generations.
Chris, thanks for retaining our historical past and congratulations on leaving your mark on the U.S. Division of Well being and Human Services and products.
We would like you a more than pleased retirement.
[ad_2]