Born in Camden, the son of a carpenter, Smith attended the Northern Polytechnic to learn building crafts. Inspired by the publication in 1927 of Eugène Atget's views of Paris in Architectural Review, he was given a camera by the designer Enid Marx. The painter Paul Nash encouraged his photography and Smith began a career photographing fairgrounds, circuses, miners and dockers. His work first appeared in Modern Photography in 1936. He became the most distinguished architectural photographer of his generation. His 80,000 negatives, prints and photographic effects are now lodged with the British Architectural Library. Olive Cook met Edwin Smith on the stairs of the house on Rosslyn Hill where they both lived, and they embarked on a seventeen-year partnership recording the architecture and popular art of Britain.