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After 32 years at HHS, and 38 years within the federal executive, our photographer Chris Smith is retiring. I will be able to talk for our entire HHS workforce after I say we’re going to omit seeing him round together with his digital camera, and we’ll omit his presence.
He’s a well known identify round right here, recognized right through our development and around the federal executive.
In 3 a long time, he’s captured historical past and helped inform our tale to the country. He did extra than simply create atypical pictures; he helped us file who we’re as 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 now have an exceptional document of what the individuals who’ve been a part of HHS have finished for The us during the last 32 years.
Chris began at HHS in September 1990 and has served beneath 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 beneath any other trailblazer and early Black photographer within the federal executive.
Chris’s father and better half’s father have been each Tuskegee Airmen and his father was a fireman in D.C., Chris’s place of birth. Chris attended Duke Ellington Faculty of the Arts and came upon his love of images thru a summer season formative years program and through taking part in 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 strengthen of our paintings to deal with the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Chris has additionally taken numerous headshots, together with my very own, and 4 of his Secretary portraits these days cling within the Nice Corridor the place they are going to keep, enshrined in historical past.
That’s why I sought after to take a second and write slightly about Chris, his existence, and his paintings – it’s part of historical past. Historical past flows thru us, and we grow to be it. It’s one thing value celebrating, and one thing value maintaining for long term generations.
Chris, thanks for maintaining our historical past and congratulations on leaving your mark on the U.S. Division of Well being and Human Services and products.
We want you a more than pleased retirement.
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