Foto 006 - Rodney Smith

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.

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 …