Our latest issue (B+W 311) features an interview with curator Anne Morin, the editor of a new book on acclaimed fashion and portrait photographer Rodney Smith.
‘Looking at the work of New York-based photographer Rodney Smith, you wouldn’t guess that many of his most famous images were produced in the 1990s and 2000s,’ observes journalist Graeme Green. ‘With smart, retro suits, hats, dresses and umbrellas, there’s an out of time quality to his pictures.’
Graeme’s interview with curator Anne Morin explores Smith’s legacy, how his work occupies the space between the real and surreal, and why his images have a deeper meaning beyond portraits and fashion.
Morin says: ‘Smith studied philosophy and theology at the beginning of the 1970s, before his father died in 1972. He was always searching another dimension, a metaphysical dimension, a higher plane. The fact that he was always reaching for perfection, or a divine dimension, is reflected in his work. The human world is a place of mistakes, and the divine world is a place of perfection. His pictures are in between both worlds. It’s not reality or surreality, but at the crossroads between those worlds.’
A book on Rodney Smith, edited by Anne Morin, is published by Silvana Editoriale price £32.
Order your copy of B+W 311 here.