Installation image
Even more so than the finished artworks themselves, this show is just brimming with photographic ideas. The weaving of cloth images and paper ones, the interlayering of quilt patterns, the flattening and reassembly of scanning/photocopying, the intentional management of distortion, the extension of collage into three dimensions of surface and texture – Smith was testing each one, trying to figure out how photography might fit in. This show should be on the required syllabus of every young photographer bent on demolishing the limits of the medium, not because they should acknowledge that Smith got there first (which he did), but because he deserves to be a mentor and inspiration to those following in his footsteps.
