The End Starts Here: Rodney Smith, Photographer

Wonderful take by a master photographer. Absolute gold.

The End Starts Here:

"The question arose for me: How do I make pictures that have strength and intensity with people who do not generally possess it?

The answer for me lies in stepping back, rather than going forward. When I was younger, I kept getting closer, until I had removed all the artifice, until I was standing face to face with people. I would look in their eyes to their souls and I would find my own personal strength.

Now I was asked to photograph the “beautiful people.” It was not about their soul and character, but rather about their style, their beauty, or even their clothing.

Without consciously even realizing it, I learned to make the photographs despite these restrictions or constraints, even better than what proceeded it. I think the general solution became what was hidden and only occasionally expressed in my early work, and that was humor.

I learned how to step back, so that the model became a figure rather than a portrait. He becomes part of the story, reciting lines with me, rather than at me. It is a story with him as a character, a personage, rather than a novel about him."