Philosophy and Surrealism: Rodney Smith's Parallel World

(by Luciano Fioramonti) Surrealism and philosophy, finding each other in the interval between divine perfection and incompleteness human in the continuous search for formal balance of images that aim to say more than what appears, a challenge to looking "with the mind's eye." A parallel world takes shape between the exact geometries, the shadows, the glimpses of light and the Magritte-like figures poised between taking flight or fall into the void that Rodney Smith captured in his shots. fascinating journey told by 123 images gathered together Rovigo hosts the first Italian retrospective dedicated to the artist of New York died in 2016 at the age of 68. Elegant photographs that destabilize, the result of long and careful conceptual work in which irony, incongruity and gaze are confused melancholy, optimism and disillusionment. ''Rodney Smith, photography between real and surreal'' produced by Silvana Editoriale has the merit of finally bringing to the attention of the great I publish a little-known figure, considered above all for his work in the fashion world. "It's a big misunderstanding, it was much more. Not a photographer but a philosopher who used the photography at the service of his vision'', observes Anne Morin, the curator who in the beautiful essay in the catalogue focuses on the Smith's passion for Spinoza, Descartes, Plato is witnessed from his library full of volumes and on theological studies. The shots describe an enchanted world, the search for a another dimension. ''Smith places himself in the interval between the human and the divine - Morin underlines -. It leaves open a crack you can enter to go further and find the your vision. You don't know where you are, you're in another reality.'' They are photos of suspended atmospheres, of characters that float in space, without references to time or place, taken in 2000 they refer to the Thirties or the Seventies, they evoke existential conditions despite the precision of the captions, with the names of the models, the description apparently superfluous gestures and titles. Although it seems very constructed, the photos were born spontaneously. Having chosen the place, Smith waited for the right moment of light to find the perfect balance of all the elements of the composition and was taking place. As happened in 1995 for the symbolic image of the five subjects on a barge on the Hudson with umbrellas opened in correspondence with the Twin Towers and the others skyscrapers of the skyline. Rodney Lewis Smith fell in love with photography as a child. A student of Walker Evans and inspired by the work of Margaret Bourke-White, Henri Cartier-Bresson and William Eugene Smith, ha published in the most important newspapers of the time, Time, Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Vanity Fair tying his name to the big fashion brands. He loved to define himself as "an anxious solitary'' and for a long time he shot in black and white, alone with the use of film and light, without retouching or digital interventions. He switched to color in 2002, a step convinced that was not comparable to the dazzling intensity of the white and black''. The Rovigo exhibition also offers references to painting and cinematic influences of Hitchcock, Terrence Malick and Wes Anderson, and the greats of silent cinema. Leslie Smolan, widow of Smith and today curator of his artistic legacy, has I attended the inauguration remembering having known him in 1987. ''I fell in love first with his talent and then with the man - he said -. I'm happy that Italy has opened a brings to his work and may he receive joy from his photos ever old and predictable''. Rodney Smith is described as ''a authentic engineer of lost time'', a perfectionist very serious, obsessive and meticulous in building his order geometric of thought. He summarized in one sentence the key to reading his way of observing the world: "If a photo has a answer for every question, no need to look at it more than once time''