About

Mina Smart is a photographer and analog acolyte specializing in alternative fashion, portraiture, and landscape photography. When Mina isn’t out shooting she can often be found in her darkroom mixing up chemistry for one of her ongoing projects.

Mina’s work explores sexuality and gender through abstract portraiture, hoping to put a lens to different ways of being and coming to terms with ones own experience of gender and sexuality. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Mina’s work focuses on landscapes. She hopes to capture the vastness and scale of the world and showcase what nature has to offer, in the hope that people may one day want to preserve what is left of the natural world.

Mina has a background in engineering, not art. She’s spent most of her career working for engineering firms and in software. However, she has always needed to find outlets for her creativity and photography, being a more technical discipline, lined up very well with her existing skillset.

Outside of photograpyh, Mina is an occasional burlesque performer. She uses comedic burlesque as an alternative outlet for her visual stylings and fashion skills. Regarding fashion, Mina is a fashion designer with her partner at House of Etiquette. She and her partner’s work has been featured in Vogue, on celebrities such as Lady Gaga, and on screen in American Gods. Mina has also been involved in small videography projects making music videos for local artists.

Mina is currently focused on four photographic projects: 40, a study on aging as a queer woman; Just the furniture, an ironic view of how trans women are included in society; AGP, a study on trans and cis women’s expressions of sexuality; and Atlantic, a photographic journey around the landscapes of the North Atlantic.

Mina grew up in various small towns throughout Southern Ontario. While working in engineering she has worked abroad and at home in Canada. Mina is currently living and working in Toronto, Canada.