Just in case someone would like to use piexiv2, here is a solution: image is resized using PIL library, EXIF data copied with pyexiv2 and image size EXIF fields are set with new size.
import pyexiv2
import tempfile
from PIL import Image
def resize_image(source_path, dest_path, size):
# resize image
image = Image.open(source_path)
image.thumbnail(size, Image.ANTIALIAS)
image.save(dest_path, "JPEG")
# copy EXIF data
source_image = pyexiv2.Image(source_path)
source_image.readMetadata()
dest_image = pyexiv2.Image(dest_path)
dest_image.readMetadata()
source_image.copyMetadataTo(dest_image)
# set EXIF image size info to resized size
dest_image["Exif.Photo.PixelXDimension"] = image.size[0]
dest_image["Exif.Photo.PixelYDimension"] = image.size[1]
dest_image.writeMetadata()
# resizing local file
resize_image("41965749.jpg", "resized.jpg", (600,400))