Rodney Smith was a celebrated American fashion photographer. Employing a distinctive, stylized aesthetic, his playful images were characterized by their use of Surrealist motifs such as umbrellas and bowler hats, which invited comparisons to the painter René Magritte. “Composition in photography is like rhythm is in music,” he once observed. Born on December 24, 1947 in Long Island, NY, he was raised by his father, Standford Smith, a prominent leader in the fashion industry who shaped the young artist’s interest in glamour and beauty. He went on to study at the University of Virginia and Yale Univeristy under famed American photographer Walker Evans. Smith contributed to a variety of major publications over the course of his career, notably including Time, Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times Magazine. In 1975, he received a Jerusalem Foundation Fellowship which enabled him to live in Jerusalem for three months. This work resulted in his first book, In the Land of Light, published by Houghton-Mifflin Company in 1983, which has remained one of his best-known series. Smith died at the age of 68 on December 5, 2016 in Snedens Landing, NY.