Should you ever need to identify a work by the New York photographer Rodney Smith, who lived from 1947 to 2016, look for these clues. First, his images of dreamlike whimsy are usually contained within a pleasing symmetry—they’re very Wes Anderson but in black and white. Next, his subjects resemble Charlie Chaplin or characters out of a Frank Capra film—they’re often wearing hats—yet they are placed in Hitchcockian situations: chased by airplanes (very North by Northwest) and inhabiting Magritte-like spaces.
A double self-portrait by Smith, taken outside the Schoenbrunn Palace, in Vienna, 1998.
All this is to say that Smith—who primarily photographed with a 35-mm. Leica M4 before transitioning to a 120/6×6 medium-format Hasselblad with an 80-mm. lens—was both cinematic and architectural. Or so say the writer Susan Bright and the visual artist Anne Morin in a major new monograph, Rodney Smith: Photography Between Real and Surreal.
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