The Palazzo Roverella in Rovigo is hosting a comprehensive retrospective dedicated to American photographer Rodney Smith, transporting visitors into a universe where formal perfection conceals subtle melancholy and glimpses of hope. The exhibition presents more than one hundred images where the photographer masterfully combines compositional rigor, elegance, subtle irony, and a touch of surrealism, creating photographs suspended between reality and enchantment that reference the paintings of Magritte and films by Hitchcock and Wes Anderson.
The exhibition is structured around six conceptual themes that explore Smith's unique artistic vision. Beginning with "The Divine Proportion," where each frame adheres to an almost mathematical compositional rigor, primarily the golden ratio, the exhibition continues with "Gravity," where figures and objects seem to defy the laws of physics, as if floating in a dreamlike and unreal universe. "Ethereal Spaces" and "Through the Mirror" play with the duplicity of reality planes, where no traces of places, times, or circumstances remain, with the latter theme referencing Alice's passage between two worlds in "fall," reflected in bodies that seem to defy gravity.
The exhibition concludes with "Time, Light and Permanence" and "Passages," exploring the boundaries and thresholds that lead to an undefined elsewhere and brilliant light. These final sections examine Smith's fascination with transitions and the ephemeral nature of captured moments, creating a sense of movement within stillness.
Rodney Smith, whose photographs have been published in prestigious publications such as TIME, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Vanity Fair, collaborated with renowned brands like Ralph Lauren and Bergdorf Goodman throughout his career. As a student of Walker Evans, Smith brought a unique perspective to photography, having also specialized in philosophy and theology. He found in photography the language that allowed him to express himself fully, combining his intellectual background with visual artistry.
According to exhibition curator Anne Morin, Smith's images are the result of deep reflection on the relationship between man, God, and nothingness. This concept draws its roots from the writings of Paul Ricoeur, a philosopher inscribed in the phenomenological and hermeneutical tradition, from Cartesian quotations, and from Spinoza's idea that the most appropriate response to the mystery of God is to embrace the harmony of hypotheses. According to Ricoeur, man finds himself at the crossroads of these worlds, where fallibility and error reside.
This concept of imperfection always troubled Smith, which is why "each image he produces, with the meticulous precision of a goldsmith, is a constantly renewed attempt to recreate this divine harmony and achieve a superior state, if only for a fraction of a second," explains Morin. His images underwent no retouching; they are the result of meticulous composition during shooting and absolute mastery of the scene. They contain strange details and surreal, offbeat elements that create scenarios where everything seems possible.
This combination of aesthetics and technique creates the illusion of perfection and whimsical imagery. Each element, whether it's a leaning body, an unreal garden, or an absurd situation, contributes to creating an unstable yet fascinating balance. According to Susan Bright, "His photographs, while capturing a precise moment, are charged with anticipation and invite the viewer to complete the story with their imagination. At the heart of each film is a fundamental question: what happens next? This current of anticipation is the engine of cinema, nourishing the audience's innate desire for narrative and meaning. Photography, however, is often perceived as a precise moment, which leads most reflections on this medium to consider it in relation to time, capturing an instant that will never be reproduced."
In Rodney Smith's work, one feels an impression of suspended time. "Most of his famous works were made in the 1990s and early 2000s, and yet these photographs evoke the 1930s. What we experience is an imagined time, a tribute to the style and elegance of an idealized era," adds Bright. A single image can summarize narrative intrigue, condense the story into concise visual moments, and transform the viewer into a co-author. These are moments suspended between the certainty of formal control and openness to the unexpected, which come to life in the observer's imagination, transforming photography into a small scene from a possible story.
Despite the persistent veil of melancholy, Smith wrote that his surrealist photographs captured "a world of optimism, happiness, often fantasy and joy." An agitated inner life and tension between perfection and imperfection accompanied him throughout his life. The leaning body, a strong reference to silent cinema, is a distinctive trait of his style and also a sign of "right measure," of mastery of subject and photographer, which demands perfect balance and control.
Most of the exhibited works are in black and white, as Smith only began working with color in 2002. As Smith often explained, "45 years and thousands of films later, I still have this unwavering love for black and white. Color has a different function for me, but nothing equals the darkness and lush intensity of black and white for me. It's an abstraction by addition." Susan highlights the tension between aspirational perfection and latent melancholy, while Anne reveals the torment of the struggle between nothingness and the divine.
Together, they illuminate how Smith's photographs—with their impeccable composition, imaginary worlds, and enigmatic figures—embody these profound dualities. "His work reminds us that being human is, by essence, an exercise in beautiful contradiction: capable of simultaneously embodying multiple and seemingly incompatible experiences," explains Leslie Smolan. The exhibition "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.
