Chamlee has been the recipient of numerous grants, most recently from the Leeway Foundation for “Excellence in Photography.” Her photographs have been widely exhibited and are in numerous collections, both public and private in the United States and abroad. She is collected in over 25 museums in the United States.

Her first book, Natural Connections: Photographs by Paula Chamlee, consisting of photographs and writing about the natural landscape, was published in 1994 and established her reputation as a highly original artist working within the classical tradition of straight photography.

In Chamlee’s second book, High Plains Farm, published in 1996, she looked to her roots and photographed and wrote about the farm where she grew up on the High Plains of the Texas Panhandle. One critic called High Plains Farm “one of the genuinely significant contributions to photography and landscape study in many a year,” while another described it as “epic in its vision and intimate in its humanity.”

Her third book, San Francisco: Twenty Corner Markets and One in the Middle of the Block, published in 1997, takes a look at the uniqueness of small, family-owned markets amidst the larger, faster-paced commerce of a big city.

In 2004 she published two books of photographs from Tuscany: Tuscany: Wandering the Back Roads—Volume I, and Madonnina. She recently completed a series of still lifes, The Bonsai of Longwood Gardens, a collaborative work with her husband, the photographer, Michael A. Smith.

Most recently, she has photographed in Baja California and in Iceland.

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During his second year as a photographer, he began teaching his own seminars and workshops, but after seven and a half years, he stopped teaching to dedicate himself solely to the making of his photographs.

His photographic journeys during the past 36 years have taken him to every state in the continental United States, western Canada, and Europe. The results of these remarkable odysseys are included in the permanent collections of over 100 museums in the United States, Europe, and Asia, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Art Institute of Chicago, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

His commitment to the medium has resulted in nearly 200 exhibitions. In addition, he has twice received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and he has been the recipient of major commissions to photograph four American cities. In 1981, Smith’s first book, the two-volume monograph, Landscapes 1975–1979, was awarded Le Grand Prix du Livre at the Rencontres Internationale de la Photographie in Arles, France. At that time, the Swiss publication Print Letter commented that “For the first time in the 11 years of the Rencontres, a deserving book has won the book prize.” 

In 1992, Smith was honored with a 25-year retrospective exhibition at the International Museum of Photography at the Eastman House in Rochester, New York. To mark the occasion, Michael A Smith: A Visual Journey—Photographs from Twenty-Five Years was published.

His first book of portraits, The Students of Deep Springs College, was published in the fall of 2000. His next book was published in the fall of 2004: Tuscany: Wandering the Back Roads—Volume II. He recently completed a series of still lifes, The Bonsai of Longwood Gardens, a collaborative work with his wife, the photographer, Paula Chamlee. Most recently he photographed in Baja California and in Iceland.

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