For the first time in Italy, Palazzo Roverella hosts a major retrospective dedicated to New York photographer Rodney Smith (1947–2016), on display from October 3, 2025, to February 1, 2026. Over one hundred works, curated by Anne Morin, showcase Smith’s unmistakable style, characterized by elegance, surrealism, and refined compositions often compared to those of Magritte. His iconic black-and-white photographs, created solely with film and natural light, blend visual poetry, irony, and formal rigor. A student of Walker Evans, Smith worked for prominent magazines and fashion brands, drawing inspiration also from classic cinema. The exhibition is divided into six thematic sections and celebrates an artist capable of transforming reality into vision and the everyday into wonder.

Smith’s aesthetic, suspended between dream and precision, leads viewers into poetic and timeless worlds inhabited by elegant figures and surreal settings. His images, never digitally retouched, result from meticulous formal research and deep philosophical reflection. A cultured and solitary man, he found in photography a means to give meaning to existence, to “reconcile the everyday with the ideal.” Influenced by great masters like Ansel Adams and Cartier-Bresson, Smith distinguished himself with a unique and recognizable voice. His works evoke the grace of silent cinema and the visual irony of Buster Keaton and Chaplin, blending humor and depth. Even his color photographs, produced only since 2002, reveal a new dimension of his poetic vision. The exhibition is organized into six sections, including The Divine Proportion and Through the Looking Glass, illustrating the complexity of his vision. Promoted by the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Padova e Rovigo and important institutional partners, this is an unmissable opportunity to discover the enchanting and refined world of one of contemporary photography’s great masters.