After 32 years at HHS, and 38 years within the federal authorities, our photographer Chris Smith is retiring. I can converse for our entire HHS group once I say we’re going to overlook seeing him round along with his digital camera, and we’ll miss his presence.
He’s a well known identify round right here, identified all through our constructing and throughout the federal authorities.
In three a long time, he’s captured historical past and helped inform our story to the nation. He did extra than simply create extraordinary photographs; he helped us doc who we’re as individuals, and who we’re as a Division.
As a result of it is not simply the work we do, it is the people who do the work. And because of his eager eye, we’ve an unparalleled file of what the individuals who’ve been a part of HHS have performed for America over the past 32 years.
Chris began at HHS in September 1990 and has served beneath six administrations and photographed 9 HHS Secretaries. Earlier than that, he obtained his introduction to the federal authorities on the U.S. Division of the Treasury the place he labored beneath one other trailblazer and early Black photographer within the federal authorities.
Chris’s father and father-in-law have been each Tuskegee Airmen and his father grew to become a fireman in D.C., Chris’s hometown. Chris attended Duke Ellington College of the Arts and found his love of images by means of a summer time youth program and by 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 work is featured within the Smithsonian—this image he took of buttons and lapel pins in assist of our work to handle the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Chris has additionally taken numerous headshots, together with my very own, and 4 of his Secretary portraits at present hold within the Nice Corridor the place they are going to keep, enshrined in historical past.
That’s why I wished to take a second and write just a little about Chris, his life, and his work – it’s part of historical past. Historical past flows by means of us, and we turn into it. It’s one thing price celebrating, and one thing price preserving for future generations.
Chris, thanks for preserving our historical past and congratulations on leaving your mark on the U.S. Division of Well being and Human Providers.
We want you a really pleased retirement.
