Smith’s portrait of Duke Ellington at the Civic Auditorium (now called McCaw Hall) in 1949. Credit: ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF MOHAI/AL SMITH COLLECTION

Smith’s portrait of Duke Ellington at the Civic Auditorium (now called McCaw Hall) in 1949.

Smith’s portrait of Duke Ellington at the Civic Auditorium (now called McCaw Hall) in 1949. ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF MOHAI/AL SMITH COLLECTION

When Al Smith was born in Seattle in 1914, black residents were less than 1 percent of the city’s population. He was the first black student to attend O’Dea, the private Catholic boys’ school on First Hill. He was the only black member of his Boy Scout troop.

Smith was given his first camera in 1926, but photography was never more than a hobby, something he made time for after he was done with work at the Bremerton shipyard or the post office. Any money he made from selling the photos he used to buy more equipment. Ultimately, Smith’s “hobby” created a prolific and varied historical record that can easily compete with the works of the 20th century’s most celebrated documentary photographers.

He had a talent for capturing social moments, as is immediately clear in early photographs of friends, classmates, and cheering crowds at a Ubangi Blackhawks football game. By the middle of World War II, he was spending most of his free time taking pictures of the Central District and Seattle’s rapidly expanding black community.