One type of photographer chases red carpets; another is Tim Smyth, who once drove deformed carrots from a farm in North Yorkshire to a studio in London for more than a year. He would arrange them in controlled light, examine them for ten or twelve hours at a time, and then shoot them as if they were relics from an old excavation. It sounds strange. Most likely, it is. However, it’s also the kind of obstinacy that ends up in MoMA’s and Yale’s permanent collections.

Smyth was born in Bristol in 1985, attended the London College of Communication for his training, and matured as a documentary photographer just as Instagram was teaching people how to make life easier. Filters were permeating food, faces, and the weather like a gentle fog. His Defective Carrots project, which featured split, curved, knobbly vegetables photographed against neutral backgrounds with the kind of reverence typically reserved for portraits, felt almost confrontational against that backdrop. The conversation abruptly changed when Martin Parr declared it to be one of the best books of the year. It wasn’t a joke. Who determines what is valuable was the question at hand.

Even when the topic drastically shifts, the question follows him from project to project. He created two bodies of work that sat strangely next to each other while he was in Spoleto for the Festival Dei Due Mondi. The carrot pictures, flaws. And My Son’s Absence, a monument honoring Libyan refugees. On paper, the leap appears startling. Really, it isn’t. Both inquire as to who is judged deserving of display, who is seen, and who is sorted out. It’s possible that Smyth doesn’t even consider these to be distinct issues.

Slow talks with men in the Spoleto suburbs, many of whom had survived arduous journeys from Niger, Togo, Guinea, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone, gave rise to the refugee series. There is no dramatization in the images. They observe. In a media setting that rewards shock, there is a subdued refusal to capitalize on the situation, which feels intentional and likely costs him reach. Smyth appears to be more concerned with dignity than with policy, though it’s still unclear if photography can significantly alter political discourse. It may seem insignificant, but he approaches his subjects instead of staring at them.

Interviews frequently bring up this detail: late nights spent gathering food scraps from restaurant bins, arranging them into street still lifes, and taking pictures of them in the orange glow of sodium streetlights. Imagine him crouching on a peaceful side street in London, with traffic humming a few blocks away, creating something that resembles classical art out of trash. That level of patience is more indicative of temperament than skill.

While his partner stayed in London, he spent six weeks in Italy working on a more subdued project called In Your Absence. She emailed him digital pictures of the food she had prepared. He reinterpreted them using his own perspective. It appears to be about food. Actually, it isn’t. When two people aren’t in the same kitchen, domestic life splits and reforms. It’s about distance. In a way that photographers seldom permit, the piece feels intimate.

Additionally, there is a business choice worth considering. The al-Assad Campaign’s print sales in 2014 benefited Syria Relief. It’s not a significant gesture in the grand scheme of things, but it conveys an understanding of the piece’s place in the greater narrative—a refusal to maintain the artist’s detached distance when taking pictures of other people’s tragedies.

When you stroll through one of his exhibitions, the carrots are unbelievably abundant. The soil, the hairs on the roots, and the slight bruises on the skin are all visible. They have an alien appearance. At first, a little unsettling. Then, almost lovely. He seems to be putting the audience to the test by posing questions about what is deserving of attention. You probably haven’t noticed it yet, whatever Tim Smyth chooses to focus his camera on next. That’s kind of the point.