Rabbi Frank Dabba Smith was born in California. He studied Linguistic Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley, and qualified as a teacher. In 1994 he was ordained as a rabbi at Leo Baeck College. Rabbi Dabba Smith joined Harrow and Wembley, London, England, from Northwood in 1997, where he had served as assistant rabbi. He also works as a freelance photographer, and The Economist has published over 150 of his images. His rabbinical thesis Photography and the Holocaust, is a critical approach to surveying the use of photograhy as a communications and propaganda device by all parties involved in the Holocaust.

He wrote the text to My Secret Camera - Life in the Lodz Ghetto with photographs by Mendel Grossman. His has written a book concerned with altruism during the Holocaust.

In addition, Rabbi Smith has been researching for over ten years the altruistic activities of the renowned camera maker, Ernst Leitz of Wetzlar, on behalf of Jews and other persecuted people during the Shoah. During 2007, this  original research has received prominent international attention with long  articles in journals such as the Financial Times (London), Le Monde (Paris), 
Die Welt (Berlin), Suddeutscher Zeitung (Munch) and Courrier Japan (Tokyo).