I stumbled on Rodney Smith when looking for a photographer to emulate. After doing the project and finishing my prints, I went back to Smith's website and read his biography (seemingly an autobiography) to explain him to my peers in class. Reading his biography I got a better sense of my relationship to the photographer and his work, and perhaps an insight to why his work spoke to me. In some ways he is a "film philosopher." I use this term (which is not really a term) to describe a man who thinks about the landscapes around him, hypothesizes about how a person might fit into said landscape, and then attempts to prove that the way he invisions people in the landscape is not only doable, but beautiful. "He creates worlds whose logic is his own. He's old school with a twist.
A landscape photographer. Who places people in landscapes. A realist who puts dreams onto paper."
So in an attempt to emulate Rodney Smith (born 1947), I took pictures that were both landscapes and portraits; pictures where the characters emphasis a certain aspect of the landscape without necessarily taking over the image.
Ladies and Gent, without further ado, I present the selected works of Rodney Smith, academic and photographer:
