Rodney Smith: A Leap of Faith

Paul Martineau, with contributions by Rebecca A. Senf and Leslie Smolan Introduction by Graydon Carter

Rodney Smith’s prolific photographic career–including never-before-seen images–is examined in a new monograph from Getty Publications

Like all great art, Rodney’s had a look that became singular over time, and you recognize it the moment you see it. -GRAYDON CARTER

Prominent fashion photographer Rodney Smith's (1947-2016) imaginative and whimsical images from a forty-five-year career are thoughtfully curated into Rodney Smith: A Leap of Faith (J. Paul Getty Museum, Hardcover $65.00). This title is the definitive record of the life's work of this truly original artist and educator. Available for purchase May 16, 2023.

Born in New York City, Smith started work as a photo essayist, before turning to portraiture, and eventually finding his niche and greatest success in fashion photography. He was a regular contributor to The New York Times, W Magazine, Vanity Fair, Departures, and New York Magazine, and shot campaigns for luxury retailers including Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, and Ralph Lauren, among others.

Inviting comparison to the surrealist, Rene Magritte, Smith's' fashion photography has long been hailed as a delightful revelation. Meticulously-crafted, humorous, paradoxical, romanticized, and fun, Smith created scenes of enchantment, and surprising, dream-like worlds without retouching, setting him apart from his contemporaries and beyond. Getty Museum curator Paul Martineau describes Smith, ''...like Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, his photographs lead us down the rabbit hole to a fantastical place that is just beyond our reach but one intended to inspire us to be better versions of ourselves.'''

In Rodney Smith: A Leap of Faith, Martineau weaves through the artist's history in a detailed bio-critical essay, mapping the artist's creative trajectory—including his introduction to photography, early personal projects, teaching, commissioned pieces, and career in fashion-providing insight into his personal life and character, contextualizing his work and creative tendencies within his privileged but lonely upbringing and complex emotional and psychological makeup.

This lavish volume features nearly two hundred reproductions of Smith's images-many of which have never been published. Inspired by renowned Life magazine photo-essayist W. Eugene Smith, taught by Walker Evans, and devoted to the techniques of Ansel Adams, Smith was driven by technical mastery and beauty. The Center for Creative Photography's chief curator, Rebecca A. Senf contributes an in-depth technical assessment of Smith's production, his exacting process, and his use of photography as a means of human connection.

Virginia Hanusik: Into the Quiet and the Light

By Virginia Hanusik

Publisher : Columbia Books on Architecture and the City

2024 | 184 pages

In South Louisiana, where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico, water―and the history of controlling it―is omnipresent. Into the Quiet and the Light: Water, Life, and Land Loss in South Louisiana glimpses the vulnerabilities and possibilities of living on the water during an ongoing climate catastrophe and the fallout of the fossil fuel industry―past, present, and future. The book sustains our physical, mental, and emotional connections to these landscapes through a collection of photographs by Virginia Hanusik. Framing the architecture and infrastructure of South Louisiana with both distance and intimacy, introspection and expansiveness, this work engages new memories, microhistories, anecdotes, and insights from scholars, artists, activists, and practitioners working in the region. Unfolding alongside and in dialogue with Hanusik’s photographs, these reflections soberly and hopefully populate images of South Louisiana’s built and natural environments, opening up multiple pathways that defy singularity and complicate the disaster-oriented imagery often associated with the region and its people. In staging these meditations on water, life, and land loss, this book invites readers to join both Hanusik and the contributors in reading multiplicity into South Louisiana’s water-ruled landscapes.

With texts from Richie Blink, Imani Jacqueline Brown, Jessica Dandridge, Rebecca Elliott, Michael Esealuka, T. Mayheart Dardar, Billy Fleming, Andy Horowitz, Arthur Johnson, Louis Michot, Nini Nguyen, Kate Orff, Jessi Parfait, Amy Stelly, Jonathan Tate, Aaron Turner, and John Verdin.

Rawsht Twana: Twana’s Box

By Rawsht Twana

Publisher : Fraglich Publishing

2024 | 252 pages

Twana’s Box' can be described in many ways: a journey through a photographer’s rare archive, documenting the Kurdistan region of Iraq from 1974–1992; a son’s quest to find his lost father, who was murdered by a military regime; a young man’s way to piece together the fragments of a scattered family in a scattered culture; the becoming of a photographer who, through the stories of others, starts to understand his own identity in times of war. 'Twana’s Box' is not only the photo book that holds a selection of Twana Abdullah’s archive; it is a unique insight into a time and place in a region that has since completely transformed. Rawsht has spent years piecing together his father’s negatives and stories. His archival work inspired him to become a photographer himself, working for Metrography – the first independent Iraqi photo agency – before immigrating to Europe. ills colour & bw, 21 x 27 cm, hb, Kurdish/Arabic/English

Akinbode Akinbiyi: Being, Seeing, Wandering

By Akinbode Akinbiyi

Publisher : Spector Books

2024 | 252 pages

Taken across Europe and Africa, Akinbiyi’s images of everyday city life muse on the sociopolitical labyrinths of urban society

Whether in Bamako, Berlin, London, Lagos or Durban, British photographer Akinbode Akinbiyi (born 1946) creates black-and-white street scenes that function as visual metaphors, ruminating on cultural change, social exclusion and colonialism’s effect on urban planning.

Grace Wales Bonner: Dream in the Rhythm

By Grace Wales Bonner

Publisher : The Museum of Modern Art, New York

2024 | 184 pages

A deeply personal meditation on and around modern Black expression, curated by the acclaimed London-based designer
This volume, Grace Wales Bonner: Dream in the Rhythm―Visions of Sound and Spirit in the MoMA Collection, is an artist’s book created by the acclaimed London-based designer Grace Wales Bonner as “an archive of soulful expression.” Through an extraordinary selection of nearly 80 works from The Museum of Modern Art’s collection and archives, this unique volume draws multisensory connections between pictures and poems, music and performance, hearing and touch, gestures and vibrations, and bodies in motion. Photographs, scores and films by artists such as Dawoud Bey, Mark Bradford, Roy DeCarava, Lee Friedlander, David Hammons, Glenn Ligon, Steve McQueen, Lorna Simpson and Ming Smith, among others, are juxtaposed with signal texts by Black authors spanning the past century, including Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Langston Hughes, June Jordan, Robin Coste Lewis, Ishmael Reed, Greg Tate, Jean Toomer, Quincy Troupe and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. Published on the occasion of the exhibition Artist’s Choice: Grace Wales Bonner―Spirit Movers, this resplendent publication is a deeply personal meditation on and around modern Black expression that echoes Wales Bonner’s own vibrant, virtuosic designs.

Rodney Smith: A Leap of Faith

Paul Martineau, with contributions by Rebecca A. Senf and Leslie Smolan Introduction by Graydon Carter

Rodney Smith’s prolific photographic career–including never-before-seen images–is examined in a new monograph from Getty Publications

Purchase a copy

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