Rodney Smith: Photography between real and surreal

To commemorate the legacy of one of fashion photography’s most influential figures, the Rodney Smith Estate is pleased to announce several international exhibitions, both the first retrospectives in their countries, and a new book.

Ten years since his passing, Smith’s 45 years of work have remained iconic and recognizable, with an archive of work photographing celebrities, including Cyndi Lauper, to shooting major campaigns for the New York City Ballet, Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, and Ralph Lauren, among others. Smith started as a photo-essayist, turned to portrait photography, and found his most tremendous success in fashion photography. Inspired by W. Eugene Smith, taught by Walker Evans, and devoted to the techniques of Ansel Adams, he was driven by the dual ideals of technical mastery and pure beauty. This new release monograph and concurrent exhibitions, curated by Anne Morin, director of diChroma photography, aim to reveal Smith’s range, including architectural photography and filmic qualities; Susan Bright, in her essay in the book, notes the parallels between Smith’s photographic style and certain cinematic traditions, comparing his style to that of Alfred Hitchcock, Frank Capra, and Wes Anderson.

To celebrate the November 11 release of RODNEY SMITH: Photography between real and surreal, there will be a book event at New York’s Rizzoli Bookstore on November 7—more details to follow. An exhibition of the same title opens at Palazzo Roverella in Rovigo on October 4, 2025, through February 1, 2026, and is the first retrospective of the artist's work in Italy. On October 29, Rodney Smith: SURREAL opens at Franz Mayer Museum, Mexico City, also the first retrospective of Smith’s work in Mexico.

Skyline, Hudson River, New York, 1995 © Rodney Smith

Book: RODNEY SMITH: Photography between real and surreal
RODNEY SMITH: Photography between real and surreal (Silvana Editoriale), edited by Anne Morin, is distributed by DAP/Artbook, presented in both English and Italian, and accompanies the first major retrospective of the artist's work in Italy. Smith (1947–2016) creates a supreme, sublime balance between illusion and reality: women in couture dresses balancing on tightropes, dapper gentlemen seated with cardboard boxes over their heads, and optical illusions make up his playfully contradictory oeuvre.
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Men with boxes on head, Brunswick, GA, 2001 © Rodney Smith

James in Inner Tube with Duck, Lake Placid, New York, 2006 © Rodney Smith

Exhibition: RODNEY SMITH: Photography between real and surreal at Palazzo Roverella
For the first time in Italy, a major monographic exhibition will celebrate the work of acclaimed New York photographer Rodney Smith, opening at Palazzo Roverella.

This expansive retrospective, featuring over one hundred of Smith’s evocative works, curated by Anne Morin, will be on view from 4 October 2025 to 1 February 2026. The exhibition is made possible by the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Padova e Rovigo, in collaboration with diChroma photography, produced by Silvana Editoriale.

The exhibition introduces Italian audiences to a master photographer known for his unmistakable aesthetic: a refined blend of classical elegance, rigorous composition, and a subtle, surreal irony that has drawn comparisons to the works of the painter René Magritte. Long acclaimed for his iconic black and white images that merge portraiture and landscape, Rodney Smith created enchanting visual worlds full of subtle contradictions and surprises. Working exclusively with film and natural light, his dreamlike images, never retouched, are characterised by meticulous craftsmanship and exceptional formal precision.
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Woman with Hat between Hedges, Parc de Sceaux, France, 2004 © Rodney Smith

Exhibition: Rodney Smith: SURREAL at Franz Mayer Museum, Mexico City
The opening of this exhibition, October 29, 2025, falls during one of Mexico City's most spectacular weeks, with Día de los Muertos approaching on November 1st, the streets will be alive with preparations for this UNESCO-recognized celebration—altars blooming on every corner, marigold petals carpeting the sidewalks, and the city's creative spirit flowing at its fullest.

Rodney Smith's work, with its dreamlike narratives, impeccable composition, and timeless elegance, finds its perfect home in Mexico City during this season when reality and magic intertwine. His photographs, which so often explore themes of transformation and wonder, will resonate beautifully in a city preparing to honor the delicate boundary between life and death, memory and imagination.
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Leaning House, Alberta, Canada, 2004 © Rodney Smith

Don Jumping over Hay Roll No. 1, Monkton, Maryland, 1999 © Rodney Smith

Self-Portrait with Leslie, Siena, Italy, 1990 © Rodney Smith

Todd Hido: Intimate Distance, Over Thirty Years of Photographs, A Chronological Album

By Todd Hido

Publisher : Aperture

2025 | 320 pages

An expanded chronology charting Todd Hido's career, with ten years of new work.

Well known for his photography of landscapes and suburban housing, and for his use of detail and luminous color, acclaimed American photographer Todd Hido casts a distinctly cinematic eye across all that he photographs, digging deep into his memory and imagination for inspiration. Newly revised and expanded, Intimate Distance: Over Thirty Years of Photographs, A Chronological Album includes ten years of new work since the book's first publication, including breathtaking new images from his travels to Iceland, Norway, and Japan, where he brings both a familiar eye and an expansive new vision.

Though Hido has published many smaller monographs of individual bodies of work, this gathers his most iconic images, along with many unpublished works to provide the most complete and comprehensive monograph charting his career. The book is organized chronologically, showing how his series overlap in exciting ways. David Campany introduces the work and looks at the kind of cinematic spectatorship the work demands. And Katya Tylevich muses on the making of each of Hido's major monographs, "The photographs lead as far as human-made roads go. They reach the periphery of utility wires, footprints, and paths already taken." From exterior to interior, surface observations to subconscious investigations, from landscapes to nudes, from America and beyond, this midcareer collection reveals how his unique focus has developed and shifted over time, yet the tension between distance and intimacy remains.

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Nick Brandt: The Echo of Our Voices: The Day May Break, Chapter Four

By Nick Brandt

Publisher : Skira

2025 | 128 pages

The fourth chapter of the celebrated series The Day May Break by the renowned photographer Nick Brandt, featuring Syrian refugee families, displaced by climate change in water-scarce Jordan

This is the fourth chapter of The Day May Break, photographer Nick Brandt's global series portraying people and animals impacted by climate change and environmental degradation. The series was photographed in Jordan, one of the most water-scarce countries in the world. It features rural Syrian refugee families currently living there, whose lives have been seriously impacted by droughts intensified by climate change. Living lives of continuous displacement, they are forced to move their homes up to several times a year, moving to where there is available agricultural work, to wherever there has been sufficient rainfall to enable crops to grow. The photographs show the families' connection and strength in the face of adversity, that when all else is lost you still have each other. The boxes on which the families gather aim skyward, pedestals for those in our society that are typically unseen and unheard.

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Ed Kashi: A Period in Time: Looking Back while Moving Forward, 1977-2022

By Ed Kashi

Publisher : Briscoe Center for American History

2025 | 344 pages

Photographer Ed Kashi’s passion is long-term documentary projects that immerse him in issues that need attention or people’s lives whose struggles warrant concern. He has had a lengthy and varied career with National Geographic and other major magazines, traveling around the world to tell visual stories.

Kashi’s archive, now housed at the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin, houses many of his personal memories and the experiences attached to the creation of those images. More than a simple repository of images, the archive is a growing, thriving, and continually evolving organism, a living library with immense value.

Through his photography, Kashi has had an intimate, front-row seat to witness and record major events in history. His work has been a passport to worlds unseen, unveiling issues that need illumination, documenting history in the making, and capturing the human experience and the many awe-inspiring places in our fragile world. A Period in Time is a testimony to some of Kashi’s most memorable stories—people he has been privileged to observe and learn from and the places and narratives that have shaped his life, all captured one moment at a time.

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Critical Photojournalism: Contemporary Ethics and Practices

By Tara Pixley, Judy Walgren

Publisher : ‎ Routledge

2025 | 226 pages

An essential introduction to the complexities of visual representation, this book offers a critical new framework for understanding and practicing photojournalism in a global digital context.

Critical Photojournalism guides readers through a variety of ethical, technical and business skills, plus the mental health, self-care and safety considerations necessary to thrive in the field. Drawing on their extensive industry and teaching experience, the authors provide real-world advice on how to navigate the demands of the profession while addressing the impact that photojournalism has on society and ways that photojournalists can mitigate harm. Consideration is given to understanding and disrupting implicit bias and power structures in newsrooms, as well as issues around access, working in breaking news environments and balancing informed consent with varying media laws around the world. In accessible language, this book highlights the importance of collaboration and community engagement in contemporary photojournalism and encourages students to adopt a decolonial approach to their work. Readers will learn to balance the needs for accuracy and thoughtfulness with the priorities of a global, social-media-engaged audience.

This is a key textbook for those seeking a nuanced introduction to visual journalism and/or a fresh approach to their craft. This book is supported by a website which can be accessed at www.criticalphotojournalism.com. The website includes a full-length bonus chapter on video and photojournalism, interviews with professional visual journalists, further tips and tools, and a glossary of key terms.

Rodney Smith: Photography between real and surreal

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