For more than 40 years Chris Smith traveled the US and Caribbean making images for Fortune 500 companies and editorial outlets like the Wall Street Journal, National Geographic Traveler and Smithsonian Magazine. Teaching photography at Northern Kentucky University was also a part of his photographic life.
In 2013 Smith & fellow photographer Michael E. Keating began a journey to document Indiana’s historic high school gyms, aptly named the Hoosier Hardwood Photo Project. Although basketball was not born in Indiana, the state adopted the game as its own – nine of the top ten largest high school gyms in the United States are located in Indiana. Smith has traveled more than 50,000 miles, shot 150,000 digital frames, visited 300 gyms and watched countless hours of Hoosier Hysteria. In addition to being featured in the New York Times, one hundred photos from the Project are currently on display at the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame and in 2020 Indiana University Press published “Chasing Indiana’s Game” - a photographic essay.
2022 brought about the beginning of a new photo documentary, the Indiana Courthouse Project. Following another well traveled path, the goal of this work is to combine digitally created panoramic photography with standard still photos of the Hoosier state’s 92 country courthouses.
Smith lives on a farm in southeast Indiana with his wife Elise, not far from their two daughters, Kaitlin & Maggie.