Greg and Collin photograph each other in a field in Alberta, Canada. Like most of the late Rodney Smith’s work, this picture—which is included in his final collection, reissued in soft cover this week—is perfectly composed. It is also the product of a spontaneous click at the ideal moment in time. “Rodney did a lot of walking around, looking and reacting and seeing,” says Smith’s wife, Leslie Smolan. He would then “shoot the image in a fraction of a second.” The photographs Smith produced encompassed his favorite elements: men in hats, silhouettes and landscapes, the repetition of shapes—“He liked the idea of mirroring,” says Smolan, and exploring “how two figures relate to each other.” Most of all, he liked surrealism. “What is truly magical stands outside the bounds of time,” Smith once wrote, and it’s this blurring of reality and fiction—helping to “affirm what’s good and positive about the world,” says Smolan—that makes his pictures continuously intriguing. “They bring order to chaos, romance and surprise,” she says, “and envision a world that’s attainable if we become the best versions of ourselves.” She adds, “Rodney would often talk about the fact that composition is like rhythm in music.” Smith’s photographs offer an uplifting rhythm for chaotic times. —Julia Vitale