A comprehensive retrospective dedicated to American photographer Rodney Smith is currently captivating visitors at Palazzo Roverella in Rovigo, Italy. The exhibition transports viewers into a distinctive world where formal perfection masks quiet melancholy while offering glimpses of hope through over a hundred carefully curated images.
Smith's work demonstrates a unique artistic vision that combines rigorous composition with elegance, subtle irony, and surrealist touches. His photographs exist in a suspended state between reality and enchantment, drawing clear references to the paintings of René Magritte and the cinematic works of Alfred Hitchcock and Wes Anderson. The photographer's meticulous approach creates imagery that defies conventional boundaries while maintaining technical precision.
The exhibition is organized around six distinct conceptual themes that showcase different aspects of Smith's artistic philosophy. The journey begins with "The Divine Proportion," where each photograph adheres to almost mathematical compositional rigor, primarily following the golden ratio principle. This section demonstrates Smith's commitment to structural perfection in every frame.
The exploration continues with "Gravity," a collection where figures and objects appear to defy the fundamental laws of physics. In these images, subjects seem to float within dreamlike and unreal universes, creating a sense of weightlessness that challenges viewers' perceptions of reality. This theme particularly emphasizes Smith's ability to manipulate visual elements to create impossible scenarios.
"Ethereal Spaces" and "Through the Mirror" represent the exhibition's exploration of reality's duplicity. The latter section makes direct reference to Lewis Carroll's Alice, who passes between worlds while falling, reflected in Smith's bodies that seem to defy gravity. These sections play with multiple planes of reality, deliberately removing all traces of specific places, times, or circumstances to create timeless imagery.
The exhibition concludes with "Time, Light and Permanence" and "Passages," which explore borders and thresholds leading to undefined destinations bathed in dazzling light. These final sections capture Smith's fascination with transitions and the liminal spaces between different states of being.
Rodney Smith brought impressive credentials to his artistic practice, having studied under the legendary photographer Walker Evans. However, Smith was also a dedicated scholar of philosophy and theology, and he found in photography the most complete language for his personal expression. His work has been featured in prestigious publications including TIME, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Vanity Fair, while his commercial collaborations included renowned brands such as Ralph Lauren and Bergdorf Goodman.
According to curator Anne Morin, Smith's images stem from careful consideration of the complex relationship between humanity, divinity, and nothingness. This philosophical foundation draws from the writings of Paul Ricœur, a philosopher working within the phenomenology and hermeneutics tradition, as well as quotes from René Descartes and Baruch Spinoza's concept that the most appropriate response to divine mystery is embracing the harmony of hypotheses.
Morin explains that Ricœur positioned humanity at the crossroads of different worlds, where fallibility and error naturally exist. This concept of imperfection consistently troubled Smith throughout his career. "Every image that Smith produces, with the meticulous precision of a silversmith, is a constantly renewed attempt to recreate that divine harmony and to reach a higher state, if only for a fraction of a second," Morin notes.
The technical excellence of Smith's work deserves particular attention, as his images remain completely unretouched. Each photograph results from meticulous composition during the actual shoot and absolute control of every scene element. His images incorporate weird details and deliberately out-of-place, surreal elements that create scenarios where anything seems possible, achieving a combination of aesthetics and technique that produces both the illusion of perfection and whimsical imagery.
Every element in Smith's photographs, whether a tilted body, an unreal garden, or an absurd situation, contributes to creating an unstable yet fascinating balance. According to photography expert Susan Bright, "his photographs, although capturing a single distilled moment, are laden with anticipation and invite viewers to complete the story through their imagination."
Bright draws parallels between Smith's work and cinema, noting that at the heart of every film lies the fundamental question: "What happens next?" This undercurrent of anticipation forms cinema's lifeblood, fostering audiences' innate desire for narrative and meaning. While photography is often perceived as a distilled moment, Smith's work creates a unique sense of time suspension.
Interestingly, most of Smith's well-known work was produced in the 1990s and early 2000s, yet these photographs consistently evoke the 1930s aesthetic. "What we experience is imagined time, a homage to the style and elegance of an idealized era," Bright explains. A single frame can encapsulate narrative intrigue, compressing storytelling into concise visual moments that transform viewers into co-authors.
These are moments suspended between the certainty of formal control and openness to the unexpected, coming alive in observers' imaginations and transforming each photograph into a small scene from a possible story. The tilted body, a distinctive feature of Smith's style and strong reference to silent cinema, serves as a sign of middle ground between subject and photographer mastery, requiring perfect balance and control.
Despite the persistent veil of melancholy present throughout his work, Smith wrote that his surrealist photographs captured "a world of optimism, happiness, often whimsy and joy." A restless inner life and tension between perfection and imperfection accompanied him throughout his artistic journey, contributing to the complex emotional landscape of his imagery.
Most works on display appear in black and white, as Smith only began working with color in 2002. As the photographer used to explain, "45 years and thousands of rolls of film later, I still have this unwavering love for black-and-white film. Color serves a different function for me, but there is nothing to me like the blackness and luxuriant intensity of black-and-white. It is an abstraction by addition."
The exhibition's curators offer complementary perspectives on Smith's artistic legacy. Susan Bright highlights the tension between aspirational perfection and underlying melancholy, while Anne Morin reveals the torment of striving between nothingness and divinity. Together, they illuminate how Smith's photographs—with their impeccable composition, imagined worlds, and enigmatic figures—embody these profound dualities.
Leslie Smolan, Executive Director at the Estate of Rodney Smith, provides additional context: "His work reminds us that being human is, at its core, an exercise in beautiful contradiction: capable of embodying multiple, seemingly incompatible experiences simultaneously."
The exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue titled "Rodney Smith: Photography between real and surreal," published by Silvana Editoriale. The publication is curated by Anne Morin and features texts by international curators Anne Morin and Susan Bright, along with Leslie Smolan. The retrospective "Rodney Smith: Photography between real and surreal" runs from October 4, 2025, to February 1, 2026, at Palazzo Roverella, located at via Laurenti 8/10, 45100 Rovigo, Italy.
