This episode of the Foto Podcast is from a podcast I recorded with Rodney in 2012.
I’ve re-edited this conversation to improve the sound quality from its original recording and reworked the audio presentation. I feel very fortunate that Rodney took the time to chat with me over ten years ago. When he unexpectedly passed in 2016, I realized how lucky I was to be able to spend a brief amount of time with him.
Rodney was incredibly kind to me through our email exchanges, this recording, and a short 2-hour personal visit to his house in New York in the Spring of 2013. I probably spent 4 hours conversing with him in some form or another, but he left an unforgettable impression on me. I respect his work and artistic vision, but I will never forget him for his grace, openness, and thoughtfulness.
We live in a boisterous and fast-moving world, but this conversation with Rodney always reminds me to slow down and turn down the noise in my life. He lived at his own pace, and what you see in his images reflects Rodney’s personality. I hope this audio recording will give you a glimpse into his motivations, creative process, and the deep critical thinking he put into everything.
Learn more about Rodney Smith at rodneysmith.com
The Rodney Smith Estate has released a new book entitled Rodney Smith: A Leap of Faith.
“The first retrospective on the work of Rodney Smith weaves together a bio-critical essay by Getty Museum curator Paul Martineau and an assessment of Smith’s technique by the Center for Creative Photography’s chief curator, Rebecca A. Senf. Introduction by Graydon Carter. It maps Smith’s creative trajectory—including his introduction to photography, early personal projects, teaching, commissioned pieces, and career in fashion—and provides insight into his personal life and character, contextualizing his work and creative tendencies within his complex emotional and psychological makeup. Rodney Smith is the definitive record of the life’s work and worldview of a truly original artist.”
I recently received a copy of A Leap of Faith, and it’s an incredible book that is printed beautifully. This is not a paid sponsorship of any kind. I’m genuinely grateful for Rodney Smith taking the time to chat with me 11 years ago, and I think you’ll appreciate his work and his approach to life and art.
1 Rodney Smith Podcast Transcription:
I'm 65 years old, so I've been a photographer for 45 years. I guess there's a fair amount of experience with that. And, um, and I've gone through quite a bit, um, as far as the changes in photography. but going all the way back, probably the very first, I don't know, maybe a slightly unconscious inclination that I wanted to be a photographer started when I was 16 years old and my father gave me a camera.
I took a teen tour. That's what kind of popular when I was a young boy. with oth with other students my age, and we went around the United States and then we went into Mexico my father gave me a camera for that trip. on the, the, the Mexican part of the trip, we took a train from New Villa Laredo, Texas to Mexico City.
I remember this actually quite well. And [00:05:00] the train, there was a landslide across the tracks on the train. And the train stopped and it was sort of took about four days for them to clear the rocks from the tracks. And during those four days, we would get out off the train or there were many young children from Mayville Villages who would come by the train trying to sell everybody something.
And And it was their faces that really, um, appealed to me.
And I remember when I got back after the tours all over, my father looked at these pictures and, uh, there were no pictures of my contemporaries on the trip who were my, you know, people from all over the country were my age. But there were all these pictures of Mexican children. And, um, I remember my father being kind of discouraged and saying, why aren't there any pictures of you're contemporaries, that was probably the very first, and I guess somewhat unconsciously, I said inclination. The main kind of epiphany when I actually knew I said this, I want to be a photographer, was much later [00:06:00] when I was in college, probably my senior junior, I can't remember exactly whether it was my junior or senior year in college.
And I was home for the holidays, just around this time, actually, probably a little later in, in December. But, I remember I went to the Museum of Modern Art, um, which had a permanent collection of photography. Um, I'm a New Yorker and so I was home in Manhattan. and I'd been there many times before and I don't know exactly what initiated me to go to this collection of pictures I had seen before, but I did.
And I think the important part of this was that Edward Steon was still the curator of photography at that point, and I think his sensibilities were much closer to Toine, than maybe more contemporary curators. the permanent collection was composed of pictures of Gene Smith, Arthur Lang, Margaret Burke, white Stieglitz, and Steon.
And I remember walking through this, gallery and thinking, having an epiphany. And I remember basically having it in front of Eugene Smith picture, and thinking, oh my [00:07:00] God, I can do this. , and this is what I want to do. And I think it's a, that's a fairly simplistic response to a very complicated question.
But from that moment on, I knew that this is what I was going to do with my life. Now, I don't think it meant to me that I was gonna copy the work of these people. I think what I realized at that moment was I, I could take my feelings and put them on a piece of paper.
And I think that's what the revelation was to me. That I had all these anxieties and these fears and all these feelings, tremendously powerful feelings inside me without an outlet to express them. And I realized that photography was the perfect medium for me to do this. And from that moment on, and it was a number of years.
Afterwards that I actually became a photographer. But from that moment on, I knew I wanted to be a photographer.
[00:08:00] in college I was an English major and then I became a religious studies major and I, um, was sort of both. I graduated with both and then I went on to graduate school to study theology actually, and, but also with the intention of taking half my credits in the photography program.
I wanted my degree to be in [00:09:00] theology, not photography. but I did, while I was in graduate school, singularly learn my craft, I spent a great deal of time and the program at that time was really quite wonderful. Learning, the craft of photography. We learned the Z Zone system photography.
One you had to use a large format camera. And it was a really great discipline. So I learned the craft, but I also learned what I, I, I developed a vision, or I nurtured a vision of what I wanted to say is about studying theology. unfortunately, and I probably, somewhat uncomfortable for a lot of people.
I think, and I, I don't wanna say this unequivocally, that I think this is the case in most time, but it's very hard to nurture a vision studying the craft of photography. I think that the, one of the last places one would really learn to be a photographer is in an art school, just studying photography.
Now I know that's probably not a popular thing, but that's sort of how, what I believe, I think one has to have a vision and how [00:10:00] one nurtures and develops that vision, I think is by, doing something quite contradictory to the physical craft of making a picture.
I didn't study theology with any intention for looking for any answers to questions. I, I studied theology to, to sort of initiate the questions. Um, from 40 years later, I still don't have any answers. And, and I'm not sure I actually believe I could have them, but, but what I really did love was learning how to ask the right questions.
And that's, that's what studying theology did, did for me. Now, what, what do I mean by that? Asking the right questions. Well, I think theology or some of the issues that really were important to me were questions about human [00:11:00] existence. Who are we? What do we stand for? How do we fit into this world around us?
What is the nature of evil? What is the nature of good? What is the nature of man? And so it's all these questions about how the human being fits into the world and the surroundings around him. And those are still some of the prevalent themes I think, that are really important in my work. So, While I was studying the craft of photography, I was sort of, I was hope anyway.
And I, I think it, I think correctly I was nurturing this vision about, or learning for how to perform to my feelings intellectually so that I could sort of integrate the two when I actually began to make pictures. And I think it worked out during the time of me doing this. I mean, I had tremendous disapproval and, um, I don't know, people were kind of a guess, why are you doing this?
Why are you wasting your time studying theology? You know, I was in my [00:12:00] family, I was expected to do something more business-like, or do something. They're quite different. and nobody, except for my wife or the done, no one who gave me any support, they all thought I was totally crazy. But I actually. And I probably couldn't articulate it exactly why I thought it was really important to do it.
I just intuitively knew in my heart that this is what I wanted to do and um, I'm actually very happy I did it. I don't have any regrets
I'm definitely of the school of thought that you sort of, your present is definitely formed from your past. Um, and so I I I, I would definitely think that probably a, a great deal of it is not, I don't know all of it, but a great deal of it derived from my upbringing. Um, my, my mother and father who are now both dead close to 40 years.
Um, my mother 30 and my father 40 would be kind of shocking that they're still still such a prevalent and powerful force in my life. But they [00:13:00] are. And um, you know, I was, my parents were very, my father was very affluent. He was a CEO in, uh, some fashion companies and I grew up sort of in a 19th century.
lifestyle and existence. Um, when I look what it, what seemed quite normal and natural to me as a young boy. Now when I look back on it seems, you know, really from the 19th century. there was this kind of real love of refined things.
Things were always beautifully done. Everything was perfectly in its place. There was an order to everything. There were many people who taken care of, you know, servants who made things perfect and beautiful. And even though part of me was rebellious against that, I always loved it. I mean, quite honestly, I did, I, not that I loved some of the accoutrements of it, but the, if you looked at it physically, I loved it.
And it definitely had an effect on me. And I think my pictures represent the [00:14:00] more positive aspects. Of my life. I don't think they, my upbringing, I mean they, um, I'm not saying that at all. They are. That's the way it was. Cause there was a lot of negative things to it. Many negative things. Perhaps even more negative things than positive things.
But, the pictures are represent that world at its very finest. It's sort of like an affirmation of what can be, what a gentleman really, what the word gentleman, if you define it and you just dissect it, you know, to a gentle man or a nobleman. It, it's sort of those things, if they really existed in the world, if there really were gentlemen and if they really were nobleman, it's not that it's impossible, but it's slightly out of reach.
that's sort of what I think my pictures are about. Sort of how does one sort of aspire to greatness? What you have this potential inside you and how do you realize this? I think that's sort of what the pictures are. one last thing about that, now [00:15:00] I'm, as I said, 65. So one in the sixties, the very early sixties when Kennedy was president.
I was in high school. I was I think a junior in high school. And, um, that era was, you know, there was like the last feig of sort of, uh, what I would refer to as elegance and grace and beauty in, in a lot of things. Not just fashion, which my father was very much a part of, but many things was still, there was a world was holding onto it.
And then the hippie movement, the anti-war movement in the sixties, it all sort of tore all that apart. But the early sixties, maybe up to 65 or something like that, 64, 65 were the last remnants. Of an error, like was when Carrie Grant and, um, and Audrey Hepburn and Leslie Caron and all were still really popular.
It was, it was a slightly different era and then everything changed in the, by the, by the 1970s and the world became a different place.
[00:16:00] I hear that comment, something like that quite often. Um, that, that you could tell a story from the pictures that you were sort of caught in the middle of the story and you're curious about what happened prior and afterwards. I have to tell you consciously anyway, when I'm taking the pictures, I'm not aware of that at all.
but I am kind of a literary soul. I've al in every book I've ever done, there's always been writing. I've done four books and that every book has writing and photographs in it in one form or another. I always been around writers. I, when I was very young in college, before I decided I wanted to be a photographer, I thought I was gonna be a novel.
But I, I, I had the sentiment but not the skill, and I quickly realized that. So, but I guess [00:17:00] writing has always, um, been a part of me. So when you say that about the pictures, that's actually quite a compliment to me because I'm not aware of it. But if they do tell a story, uh, or there's like a fragment of the story, that would be kind of a wonderful thing and I would really like that.
Although when I'm taking it, I'm not aware of that.
the pictures are taken completely spontaneously. I know this is one of the ironies to me of, of a lot of, sort of sets off a whole discrepancy about photography in general and modern photography, but all the pictures was referred to as the lifestyle pictures of the last 10 years or 15 years are much more controlled and created.
even though they look like they're spontaneous and of the moment, they're much more created pictures than mine, which look very serene, controlled. My pictures five seconds before I took the picture, I didn't know I was gonna take that picture. And not in a hundred percent of the instances, but at least 60, [00:18:00] 70 or 80% of the time, the picture is completely spontaneous and I may have set something up and so, but I don't know what the, what the end product's gonna look like.
And then all of a sudden something, somebody does something or something happens, or the light changes, or it can be many things. And all of a sudden I say, take the picture and I take the picture. And I didn't know I was gonna take that exact picture five seconds before I took it. so I think that's kind of always been kind of interesting to me that although my pictures look quite serene and controlled and um, like they were art, art directed, um, or created under sort of very sort of, um, Rigid requirements.
Totally the opposite.
I'm definitely always first looking for the location, which would be the landscape or the environment. Once, once I've found the environment, I can always make the pictures. you know, I was, when I was very young, I was a landscape photographer, um, as well as shooting portraits. And [00:19:00] then I think one of the great things that happened to me was, , I began to integrate the two together.
I began to put people into the landscape, which is a very different thing than placing somebody in front of something. I think most people take pictures in an environment and they stick a figure or a person or a thing in front of something and they refer to that. You know, as, I don't know that term.
I can't stand environmental portraits or whatever that is. I the term I really do not like. But that, that's not the way I would operate. The person has to be sort of placed in an environment as part of it. And actually it goes back to the previous question about the spontaneity of the, of the pictures.
The reason why I can shoot these pictures so quickly is because I can very quickly get to this place where I think everything is right. I mean, almost instantaneously I will know this is the place I need to make this picture. Now, there may be a few other places too, but I'll start at this place that feels absolutely right to me.
but for me, the pictures are, are totally [00:20:00] controlled or by the environment. That's why the location work for me is by far the hardest part of making pictures is finding a location I like. and then once I've found, , which is a really rigorous and very exhausting process. but once I found this, this location, I don't want to know what the picture's gonna look like.
I, you know, when I'm scouting it, it may be gray or rainy, or it may be it's sunny and then the day of the shoot it's raining. Or I may look at it in the morning and I may be there in the afternoon and the light's totally different. So I never know what the picture is I'm gonna make there, nor do I want to.
I've never shot Polaroids in my life. I don't want to do any of that things. I just want to trust my instincts. And once I've found a place that seems appropriate or great, I'll say I can make pictures here and that's all I want to know. And then I'll go away until the, until the time I physically shoot the.
there are sometimes requirements about what I, I need to find, but the, probably it's the same thing no matter what I'm looking for. And that [00:21:00] is a place that has a sense of history to it, which is hard for me in America. , I, it's gotta have a certain Betina to it and character to it.
Um, sometimes it's the question of the light in the place, but it's, it's, it's a whole thing, a landscape. It's just gotta feel ex eccentric or original or special. To me. It's definitely my vision. but I think like if I'm looking for an interior place, There's kind of a characteristic that's involved that's in all the pictures, and that is, it's got a certain history to it and depth has been sort of aged nicely.
I rarely would shoot in a brand new location that, that hasn't aged or settled into its environment. I sort of like how things fit into a place and if, unless the location does that on some level, there isn't a history there, I probably wouldn't be interested in it. you know, I was once doing a shoot in Phoenix, Arizona, you know, and I remember scouting the city of Phoenix and I [00:22:00] couldn't find anything that I really felt worked.
I mean, it was to do it more hotel and a few other things I thought were great. But what I found really great was the landscape around Phoenix. I mean the part that was untouched. and that's where I ended up shooting the picture. Sometimes, often if I'm in Paris or in London, I can find hundreds of locations that appeal to me.
because they have this history to them. The man or somebody has interacted with this location for, for quite a while, and it, and that you can feel the patina of the interaction of the two. and that's what, that's what really I like.
And also, you know, American cities, um, they build these skyscrapers and they tint the glass to keep the light out. in Europe, luckily still, the older buildings are all oriented and, and the windows are such to let the light in. that's a, that's a huge distinction. You know, they act in European buildings, least, you know, the ones that are, I'm attracted to.
The light is like a portico. [00:23:00] It's like this entryway. um, and really wonderful things happen with the light. Well, in most new American cities, it's, again, it's to keep all the light out and to keep the temperature and the humidity and the light all controlled from the inside.
I teach a workshop, infrequently, but every once in a while and all these photographers come to the workshop and they do not have a voice at all. well, some of them do, but it's pretty minor. Um, and, you know, there's this discussion about whether it's a question of talent, or do you have a question that everyone has their own voice, they just can't express it.
And I'm definitely of the school that everyone does have a voice. They just don't know how to express it or expose it. This pops a better word. because this enormous fear is preventing them [00:24:00] from doing it, I mean, you have to tap into the part of yourself that goes really deep.
And most people don't know how to do that. Sometimes by a gift of God, somebody has that intuitively or naturally, but that's a very rare gift and I've actually never seen it. most often, people foil themselves, you know, they, they have all these fears and anxieties and frustrations, whether it be dealing with other people or their own fears, their anxieties, and they never get to the level that's required to.
Really have a singular voice. I mean, that's the difference between the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people who take pictures and the few who, who actually are photographers. And it's not so much that I, from my point of view, that one has an innately more talent than the others. Now, a lot of people would argue with that, but I don't think they do.
I just think they're able to tap into the deepest, part of their emotional being. And let that part out. And then you never have to worry about being a second rate somebody else. You can much more be a frustrate yourself because no one has your life experiences.
No one has your feelings, no one has your thoughts. All those things are unique and special to you. So if you can reach this level they can begin to express the things that reside deep within them, and then all of a sudden their pictures take on a special characteristic that is unique to them and they begin to develop a voice.
I think people are, are sort of copying everybody and mimicking everybody and running around buying the right equipment and doing everything that's completely unnecessary to develop a voice. They think that's what they need to do, but it's the last thing that they need to do. If anything, they need to step back and let something begin to emerge from deep within them.
That's what will create this special voice. And it's a very hard thing to do. And I think Chuck Close's comment is right. I think photography is particularly through the digital age, much more than even prior when there was a real craft to printing. that there is the most sort of facile of mediums that one can learn even through by taking with a, telephone.
You can take a pretty competent picture, but what I mean, but, but what distinguishes one picture from another is the kind of the emotional content of that picture.
I've been doing this for 45 years and I still use the same camera that I did when I started 40 years ago. I'm very, very rigorous with my craft. I mean, I'm extremely rigorous. Um, you know, I expose the film very properly and, and so when the day, and I went through a many years of really learning how to expose my film and make prints that represented [00:27:00] my emotional psyche.
I mean, I really like dark sh shadow detail and differentiation between that. And my prince used to represent that. And if I was much more interested in highlights, I would've done things quite differently anyway. Anyway, I really loved and grew to really know film. And then when the digital world came along, um, I, there's, there's a great aphorism, but changes, not necessarily an improvement.
And I've been watching the digital world very closely and we know I'm kind of a consultant to Epson and we produce digital prints as well as prints that are done in the dark room. You know, we scan the film and then, Make really beautiful, large mural prints, so I, I definitely in it and everybody works for me, is very digitally competent.
For myself personally, I haven't seen any reason to change. Personally, I don't really like the digital cameras. Um, I don't like seeing the picture immediately. As I said, I never shot Polaroids. I like the experience. I like to focus on the [00:28:00] experience of making the picture not on what the pic. Every single time everyone stops and looks at the picture, you've interrupted the whole process of making the picture.
That would be a terrible thing for me. I like to just to go through the whole process, focus on the thing I am doing, and I like the mystery of not knowing exactly what's on the film. Um, I, I, I don't really like the digital process that much. Now, it may get to a point where I can't get film, which is sort of beginning to happen already, or I can't do the thing and I may have to make that change.
But at this point, I would hope actually I have so many people, young people coming to me who say that they really love film much better than digital and they, they shoot on film. So there seems to be a kind of a minor resurgence in film. And it's not that I'm just, you know, such a recluse that I don't engage in the world.
I mean, I live in New York, so I'm pretty much so on some level, you know, engaged with what's going on. And if I ever felt that the digital thing was so [00:29:00] much better than what I'm doing, I would change. But so far, most people seem to really love the pictures I make on film. And when we blow them up really big, there's a certain quality to them that people really love.
Like I've had many shows at very, you know, at Brooks or um, all the technical schools and all the students who are really technically minded, love the Prince. They keep saying, how did you do this print? No. So, um, for me it's just that there's really no reason to change and of anything, I was kind of in shock that just because something became new, that everyone immediately embraced it.
I, I think they must have felt they had to, that, you know, art directors required it or, uh, the world required or, or whatever. And quite honestly, I've never, no art directors ever required me ever that I shoot digitally and they actually kind of like that I shoot on film. They all say, oh my God, this is great. I, I like the fact that, you know, I'm gonna get contact sheets. I really like this. [00:30:00] You know, so, um, I'm sure that there are constraints put on people that they want this, they want that, but I think it's more important for you to tell them what you like best.
my previous father-in-law was a really wonderful playwright and, um, very well known American playwright. And over his desk, he used to have this little sign that said, no one asked you to, no one ever asked you to be a playwright. and I think that that's really true. I mean, you, I could wallpaper my walls with rejections.
I mean, I've, over my life I've had 50 to one rejection, um, maybe a hundred to one rejection. Um, and since it's such a personal medium, um, for me, this is not a job. This is my exposing my life and my soul and my [00:31:00] pictures. There's no way one can take it personally. It is personal. and I've had many high points.
I've had really good years and really, really terrible years, both from financial points of view, from creative points of view, from everything. , but I just, must have something in the way down deep inside me, this knowledge that this is what I chose to do. No one put a gun to my head and said, this is what you must do.
And so I chose this, you know, freely and when I'm really down, I just say, you know, you've gotta stick with it. And there have been hundreds of times I thought, I don't want to do this anymore. Um, um, either I have nothing more to say or I don't want to do it, or financially it's been so difficult in my early years it was so difficult and it's still, there was terrible years.
I mean, like after nine 11, it was really, I mean, there's been many, many years when things were really terrible from a financial point of view and a creative point of view, or the job, everything. And so [00:32:00] there's like, at times 45% of me that doesn't ever want to take a picture again, that I'm done. And, but there's, luckily there's 55% of me that wants to keep on doing it.
that just sort of gets me through it. You know, Hemingway used to always talk about that he would always stop writing the day before and someplace that he wanted to continue because if he didn't have that place the next day to go to, he is not sure he'd ever pick up a pen again. But he looked, had this place where he looked forward to going forward.
And, um, I'm not sure I have that. I mean, I definitely can get kind of burnt out and I think the environment or the location or the model sometimes, but, um, many times it's the sense of place around me is what motivates me to take, make pictures. And so that sometimes has to be in a new place and so I can get kind of stuck like everybody else and then I just, um, have to force myself to keep on on going.
, after 45 years, [00:33:00] I've kind of, um, got this regimen that I. It's not perfect by any means. There's definitely problems with it, but I kind of like, you know, I'm, I don't shoot, you know, I probably only shoot, you know, 30, 40, 50 days a year. which is plenty, which provides me with a lot of, and then, you know, I work on exhibitions or I do all kinds of other things as well.
I'm always working around photography, I mean, all the time, but I don't have to be physically shooting to do that. when I was very young, I used to collect, like convince people to buy photography and when nobody wanted to, and this is in the seventies, and I once went to Andre Cortez's apartment and I was talking to him when I was buying a print for somebody.
He told me that he would go six months or a year without ever taking a picture. I could understand that perfectly. I could go six months or a year without taking a picture yet. I'd still always be a photographer. for other people I know they have to shoot every day or all the time, or they feel that they're gonna lose it or they're not a [00:34:00] photographer, but that's not the way I work.
I think most fashion photography today is pretty mediocre. I think it's all about celebrity and status and they all have the right lunch and the right, they know they date the right models and they all meet the, you know, the right art directors and it's just like in a group that just supports itself, but it's all very mediocre.
I don't think that there's this great vision that drives the photographs. Okay. Now having said that, that's just one thing. And I think there have been, I think fashion photography's had its periods where it was the mo really distinguished in the world of photography. I think, you know, in the forties and fifties and perhaps in the sixties, I think Irving Penn.
and Norman Parkinson and a few other people were incredible photographers, had a great vision and were quite extraordinary. I think today there's all this celebrity about around these photographers, but I think it's what you do about nothing. And I think the models are the same way. but I do think what is lacking in photo, in fashion photography is not something that, that's, it's actually that hard to find.
Again, I find, I, I guess [00:35:00] I have to digress for a second and tell you a story. I probably wrote this once in a blog many years ago. This wasn't quite a fashion shoot. I did, but it was close to it in the sense of the, what, what I thought was wonderful about fashion. I did, I used to God, oh, 20 years ago, 25 years ago, coach Leather had a campaign called Descendants of Famous People, and they photographed all the grandchildren or the daughters or the aunts or whatever of well-known people.
And I did about four or five of them. I, I remember the Nathan Daniel Boone's nephew, and I did, the one I'm talk, gonna talk about was Babe Ruth's niece. I photographed her at Yankee Stadium in, um, New York, which is kind of the appropriate place to do it.
And I didn't have a chance. Usually I, sometimes I, sometimes I have a chance to meet the person I'm gonna photograph. Um, prior to, but in this case, she lived, I think in Maryland or Virginia, I'm not sure. And they had a flyer up for the shoot. [00:36:00] And I meet her the morning of the shoot in a, you know, in a location van, um, outside the stadium.
And I meet her and, you know, I could tell that she feels really terrible about herself. She's looking down, she's kind of forlorned. She, I can just feel like she wants to just disappear. in, into the background, I understood that she was raised in a small trailer, um, in, in Virginia, wherever. And she had really no relation to Babe Ruth other than the fact that she was his niece.
But she came from very humble means and was really kind of almost embarrassed about this whole. Thing of taking a picture and just pushed the whole thing would go away. I could feel all this in her presence. So I introduced myself. I tell her, I'm the photographer who's gonna take your picture and if we're gonna take you into this location van, and there's gonna be a woman who's gonna do your hair and another woman's gonna do your makeup and we're gonna style you and dress you and all that.
And, and I said, while, while they're doing all that, I'm gonna go away for an hour and go look and find the right location to make the picture of you. [00:37:00] So I go away for an hour and I come back, and I go into the location van and there's this totally different person than the person I had first met before she went into the van.
She was standing upright. She looked really beautiful. She became. I saw what a little bit of hair, makeup and new clothes and being pampered, what it could really do to, not just the physical look of this person, but the whole internal emotional sense of who she was. She was transformed and I thought, oh my God, this is an incredible experience.
This is a wonderful look. Look, look what fashion can do. Instead of making people feel intimidated or that they're unattractive or something like that, it can make them feel empowered and beautiful and wonderful. This is like a Cinderella story, so I take her for a few hours, I make her portrait. She's looking really beautiful and you know, she, she just looked content and happy and I [00:38:00] think really enjoyed the experience.
Goes back to the location. Van takes off all the clothes, you know, goes back to her original clothes and walks out of the van exactly who the person was when she first entered the van with her head down and she goes back to the person she was. Now, I think the important thing of this story for me, it's not really a fashion story, but it is what fashion can do.
It is about style and grace and elegance and feeling beautiful and wonderful and special. And it's not about being intimidated because you don't have the money to buy these clothes or you have to have this closed, or you have to have the hottest, newest, ugliest thing imaginable in order to be valuable and worthwhile, that you can have a sense of style and grace intrinsic to yourself.
That it comes from inside you, not from the outside. the outside stuff. The accoutrements can help you realize who you really are. So that's again, another place where a personal style is very [00:39:00] helpful I do, I do, I love shooting fashion. It's actually really fits me. and I like the big production of it.
I like I'm the kind of photographer that can work with 20 people around me and it. It doesn't bother me in the slightest. I sort of like it. I like the collaboration of everybody, the stylists I've worked with for years. And she'll say, you know, look at this, or This person looks like great here. Or my assistant will say, oh, you should look over there.
It looks really great. I love when people do that. I feel it's like this collaborative effort. I like the whole experience of it. I do think that women, this is, you know, I think the world is kind of, so particularly now our soul full of ironies.
I think, you know, that most women would not agree with me about this at all, but I think it's been a real give and take before women in the last 25 years, and I'm not sure that they've been given more than, than they. Wanted, yes, they've achieved incredible power to be sort of equal to men. They, you know, they're now working on getting the same rewards as men.
Financially [00:40:00] they've achieved great. And I think all that's wonderful. But I always thought, even though my father was a very powerful person, you, you know, as I mentioned, he was the CEO of many companies, and he was, people were really intimidating him. I always thought my mother was the real power in the family.
He would never, she in her own private way, controlled everything and got exactly what she wanted. It was a, it wasn't as overt as it is today. It wa it was more subtle, but there was this kind of wonderful thing, quality about her. And she had this incredible life and my father worked very hard to support her.
Um, and so she could do what she wanted to do. So, I am not sure what we've gained is better than what we lost. Uh, maybe it is. Probably it is. And anyway, it's not going backwards. That's the way it is. But there is something really wonderful about, um, a kind of more graceful or a delicate, maybe understated power, like that quote you gave of me, [00:41:00] rather than the more overt one.
Like when I shot Elizabeth Hurley, who is all about give it, give it to me baby. I mean, she was, um, you know, um, and versus a woman who has a real sense of herself and walks more delicately and quietly,
I think, you know, one of the things was, I sort of animated or discussed slightly before was when I was very young, I didn't have a penny. Um, and I was really struggling. One of the ways I was able, I taught a great deal, but one of the other ways I was able to at least make a living pay my mortgage was I convinced people that photography was a really good investment and I would make a small commission.
I would buy photographs for people. And one of the things I learned was how little, the curators of photography and the art gallery directors and all these people who were sort of the professionals and experts in [00:42:00] photography knew about photography.
They basically knew nothing. They knew how to sell it, , they knew how to talk about it, but they really had not a clue about really what it meant to be a photographer or what the struggles that somebody like Stieglitz or Strand or anybody who's really first grade would go through to really distinguish themselves photographically.
Um, it's not so much the financial hardships or meeting the right people or getting the right equipment or all the things on the surface. Those things everybody has in whatever work they do. And there's really no difference. It's just a different set of rules.
And what the struggle really comes down to is the emotional struggle. And that is knowing that, you know, the all Socratic oath of no thy self. And learning how to come to grips and deal with the emo your emotional [00:43:00] core, and being able to express and expose that onto a two-dimensional flat piece of paper, is a very, very difficult thing.
And then asking people who have not had your experiences, who do not care about you, who do not even know, like people in Russia who don't even know anything about you or the place you live or your experiences, and say, look at this picture and think it's worthwhile. The only way you can really do that on a consistent basis.
Yes, you can do something kind of titillating or interesting or on a few pictures, but over a whole body of work. The only way you can really do that is if you are touching something universal. If you are speaking from your heart in a language that everyone can understand because the human psyche and spirit goes way deeper than the culture.
And so if you are able to transcend or translate your own personal feelings and put them onto a piece of paper that is a very rigorous [00:44:00] and difficult thing to do and, and requires enormous struggle and turmoil on your part, that's why living kind of the artistic life is not something to be denigrated.
It is a very, very difficult and very rare process that very few people, not that they're not capable of doing it, but are willing to take the risks. That that involves 99% of people are not capable or able or knowledgeable enough to do it. It's not that they can't, it's just that they won.
um, I have a got a good fortune to be an intern for. Ansel Adams for a week in Carmel when I was in my twenties. And I noticed, you know, he used to meet people and I, I noticed, first of all, I went there. My photographs when I was very young, looked absolutely nothing like his, but I learned all my [00:45:00] technique from him within his own system.
So I was really very anxious to have a chance to meet him and work with him. And it was great. Um, and I learned every time when I would go in the dark room with him or when I was sitting around talking to him, I would, he, I would ask him every technical question I could think of that I wanted resolved.
And he was very generous and would answer me. But, and what I learned after this week of sort of probing and listening and having him listening sometimes talk to other people and stuff, was that he would tell you exactly what was necessary in order to do something. And basically, just generally what he'd be saying was like, if you want to be a classic scholar, you gotta learn German, you have to learn Latin, you have to read, you have to study, you have to pay your dues, you have to do all these things.
and that's how you really get to a place through experience, through testing, through knowledge, through all these different things that will get you to this place where you can be really competent and capable. And I found that nobody, although they all listened to him, [00:46:00] And they nodded their head in agreement.
In the end, nobody wanted to pay any attention to 'em. They went off and go, they really, what they really wanted from Ansel Adams was tell me this pill, give me this pill I can take so I can make my pictures look like yours or tell me the quick answer so I can learn how to do something as well as you do it.
I want this in five minutes or less, you know? But I really don't wanna spend all the time that's required and all the effort and work you've put into it to do this. And unfortunately, that's not the way the world is. You know, you, you, you sort of get what you pay for, kind of metaphorically speaking about your craft, your technique, your vision, everything.
It's not something that you can just, you know, meet the right person, do all this, take a pill, wear the right clothes, be in the right place, whatever it is, have the right camera, have the right, you know, equipment, whatever that is also beside the point. The point is [00:47:00] nurturing and learning and developing a vision that is special and unique to you.
Learning what equipment that best represents that vision. Developing it, nurturing it, working on it, reflecting on it, struggling with it. That's what's required to do it, and it's not easy. Takes years. I've never, and I've had the good opportunity to meet many, many well-known people that I really care about, whether mostly writers or playwrights or painters or people of, of great esteem, and not one of them, at least in my, my personal experience, I've never met anybody who was instantaneously successful in my experience.
Every one, oh, I totally respect, has worked years to get to that place.
I mean, it's, it's, it's, but it's fun to do this. That's, you see, the thing is nobody wants to do it, but when they get immersed in it, it's part of the adventure. the best part of being a photographer is going out, engaging the world, meeting people. And taking, and making the picture, [00:48:00] the actual product, the end result, the artifact is never as good as the experience of making the picture.
To me, it's always a disappointment. Now, for other people, like if I mess my wife, she would say that the, the artifact is much better than the experience. And I think many people have said that I can make the world look perhaps slightly better than it was right in front of me. So for many people, the observer, the, the photograph is even better than the experience.
But for me, person who's taking the picture or making the picture, the experience of making the picture is the reason why I'm a photographer. I love the interaction with the world, meeting people, engaging people, being a part of the world, having it being sunny, rainy, cloudy, overcast.
and somehow having something wonderful immersed from it. That's what I love about being a photographer. that's why being in the studio, all of that has no appeal to me. It's, it's engaging the world we live in. Having an [00:49:00] excuse to participate in it, in a kind of really positive and wonderful way.
Saying yes to life over and over again, despite how many hardships you may have. That's the part that I really love.
Foto 006 - Rodney Smith