Pioneering Black photographer Ming Smith captures four boys creating rafts from rubbish in New Jersey

Ming Smith photographed the four boys on their backdoor rafts on a pond in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1972. She called the unlikely urban Huck Finn scene Setting Out to Sea, since that’s where one or two of the friends seemed to be aiming for, at least in their heads.

Smith was developing big plans of her own at that time. Detroit-born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, she had arrived in New York a year earlier after graduating from Howard University. Her first published pictures appeared in the inaugural, renowned Black Photographers Annual in 1973. The annual, with an introduction by Toni Morrison, featured the work of artists from the Kamoinge Workshop in Harlem, which was a prime mover in the Black Arts movement. Smith had become the first female member of that group. Her biography in the annual read: “New York amateur photographer Ming Smith has been taking pictures for less than a year. She is a self-taught photographer, who was first influenced by her father. ‘My photographs,’ she says, ‘attempt to open the passageway to my understanding of myself.’”

Ming Smith: On the Road is at the Nicola Vassell gallery, New York, until 15 June