Robert Polidori (born February 10, 1951) is a Canadian-American photographer known for his large-scale color images of architecture, urban environments and interiors. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

(New York),

Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal The Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (MACM) is a contemporary art museum in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is located on the Place des festivals in the Quartier des spectacles and is part of the Place des Arts complex. Founded in 1964, it is ...

Martin-Gropius-Bau Martin-Gropius-Bau, commonly known as Gropius Bau, is an important exhibition building in Berlin, Germany. Originally a museum of applied arts, the building has been a listed historical monument since 1966. It is located at 7 Niederkirchnerstra� ...

museum (Berlin), and Instituto Moreira Salles (São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro)."Robert Polidori CV." ''RobertPolidori.com''
Web.
/ref> His photographs are also included in the collections of the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

(New York),

New Orleans Museum of Art The New Orleans Museum of Art (or NOMA) is the oldest fine arts museum in the city of New Orleans. It is situated within City Park, a short distance from the intersection of Carrollton Avenue and Esplanade Avenue, and near the terminus of the ...

J. Paul Getty Museum The J. Paul Getty Museum, commonly referred to as the Getty, is an art museum in Los Angeles, California housed on two campuses: the Getty Center and Getty Villa. The Getty Center is located in the Brentwood, Los Angeles, Brentwood neighborhood ...

(Los Angeles),

Victoria & Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

(London),

Château de Versailles The Palace of Versailles ( ; french: Château de Versailles ) is a former royal residence built by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, about west of Paris, France. The palace is owned by the French Republic and since 1995 has been managed, u ...

Centre Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...

(Paris), and

Bibliothèque Nationale A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

(Paris), as well as many private collections. Described as one of "most esteemed practitioners of large-scale photography,"Wallis, Stephen. "Edward Burtynsky and Robert Polidori’s Shared Visions." ''Wall Street Journal: WSJ. Magazine'', 12 Sep. 2016
Web.
/ref> Polidori has photographed the restoration of the

since the early 1980s. He has also recorded the architecture and interiors of

Havana Havana (; Spanish: ''La Habana'' ) is the capital and largest city of Cuba. The heart of the La Habana Province, Havana is the country's main port and commercial center.

, the inner-city habitats of

Mumbai Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second- ...

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a b ...

, and

Amman Amman (; ar, عَمَّان, ' ; Ammonite language, Ammonite: 𐤓𐤁𐤕 𐤏𐤌𐤍 ''Rabat ʻAmān'') is the capital and largest city of Jordan, and the country's economic, political, and cultural center. With a population of 4,061,150 a ...

, the post Hurricane Katrina devastation of

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans
Merriam-Webster. ; french: La Nouvelle-Orléans , es, Nuev ...

, buildings emptied by the

Chernobyl Chernobyl ( , ; russian: Чернобыль, ) or Chornobyl ( uk, Чорнобиль, ) is a partially abandoned city in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, situated in the Vyshhorod Raion of northern Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine. Chernobyl is about no ...

nuclear disaster, and shelled structures in

Beirut Beirut, french: Beyrouth is the capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, which makes it the third-largest city in the Levant region. The city is situated on a peninsula at the midpoint o ...

.Zamponi, Beatrice. "Robert Polidori." ''Domas Italiano'', 18 Nov. 2016
Web.
/ref> At the time of the

retrospective exhibition in 2009, curator Paulette Gagnon described his work as a "photographic account that invites us to share the historical moments it portrays, making them part of the collective memory."Gagnon, Paulette. "Sounding Reality." Translated by Judith Terry. ''Robert Polidori''. Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal/Steidl, 2009. pp. 1-7. Print.

Life and career

Robert Polidori was born in 1951 in

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

, to a French-Canadian mother and a Corsican father. At age 9, Polidori's family moved to the United States where his father worked as an engineer at Air Force bases and NASA installations. He grew up in

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

, southern California,

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans
Merriam-Webster. ; french: La Nouvelle-Orléans , es, Nuev ...

, and Cocoa Beach, and first attended university in Florida in 1969.Siemens, Von Jochen. "When buildings start to tell a story.''Fotografic Portfolio #41'', 2010, pp. 4-8. Print. During his freshman year Polidori saw

Michael Snow Michael Snow (born December 10, 1928) is a Canadian artist working in a range of media including film, installation, sculpture, photography, and music. His best-known films are ''Wavelength'' (1967) and '' La Région Centrale'' (1971), with the f ...

's film ''

Wavelength (1967 film) ''Wavelength'' is a 1967 Canadian short subject by experimental filmmaker and artist Michael Snow. Considered a landmark of avant-garde cinema, it was filmed over one week in December 1966 and edited in 1967, and is an example of what film theori ...

'' and, inspired to study filmmaking, moved to New York City. The following year, he was hired by the legendary

Jonas Mekas Jonas Mekas (; December 24, 1922 – January 23, 2019) was a Lithuanian-American filmmaker, poet, and artist who has been called "the godfather of American avant-garde cinema". Mekas' work has been exhibited in museums and at festivals worldwi ...

and worked as the theatre manager of the

Anthology Film Archives Anthology Film Archives is an international center for the preservation, study, and exhibition of film and video, with a particular focus on independent, experimental, and avant-garde cinema.Web.
/ref> During this time, Polidori worked on four experimental films, exhibited in 1975 at the

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...

. In 1980 he graduated with a Masters of Arts in film from State University of New York (Buffalo). Polidori became interested in still photography while editing film frame-by-frame. Inspired by

Frances Yates Dame Frances Amelia Yates (28 November 1899 – 29 September 1981) was an English historian of the Renaissance, who wrote books on esoteric history. After attaining an MA in French at University College London, she began to publish her resear ...

' description in ''

The Art of Memory ''The Art of Memory'' is a 1966 non-fiction book by British historian Frances A. Yates. The book follows the history of mnemonic systems from the classical period of Simonides of Ceos in Ancient Greece to the Renaissance era of Giordano Bruno, en ...

'' of mnemonic systems requiring the memorization of empty rooms,Gerber Klein, Michèle. "Artists in Conversation: Robert Polidori." ''Bomb Magazine'', 99, Spring 2007
Web.
/ref> he purchased a large-format camera in 1982 and photographed abandoned and apartments on New York's Lower East Side.Pedersen, Martin C. "Robert Polidori on Making Pictures, DIY Cities, and the Pull of India." ''CommonEdge'', 15 Sep. 2016
Web.
/ref> In 1983 he moved to Paris and, interested in how empty spaces revealed history, began to document the restoration of Château de Versailles as a symbol of "society’s superego". In the late 1990s Polidori was engaged by ''The New Yorker'' to photograph Havana's decaying architectural heritage and joined the magazine as a staff photographer in 1998. Images from his Cuban series were later published in ''Havana'' (2001) by Steidl Verlag. Also interested in inner-city habitats or "auto-constructed" growth, Polidori recorded the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, urban sprawl of Brasilia, construction boom in Dubai, and slums of Mumbai. In May 2001, he photographed the closed Chernobyl nuclear power plant and nearby ghost town of Pripyat, Ukraine, and these images were later published as ''Zones of Exclusion – Pripyat and Chernobyl'' (2003). In 2002 Polidori was commissioned to photograph Detroit's Michigan Central Station for ''

Metropolis (architecture magazine) Metropolis is an internationally recognised design and architecture concentrated magazine with a strong focus on ethics, innovation and sustainability in the creative sector. The magazine was established in 1981 by Horace Havemeyer III of Beller ...

''. Described by editor Martin C. Pedersen as "a keen observer of the built world", the magazine later published his urban images as ''Robert Polidori's Metropolis'' (2005). In the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Polidori photographed the damaged homes and buildings of New Orleans, and documented the city's early restoration in 2006. Published as ''After the Flood'' (2006) by Steidl Verlag, many of these images were also exhibited at New York's

as "New Orleans after the Flood", a popular and well-attended exhibition.Updike, John. "After Katrina." ''The New York Review of Books'', 30 Nov. 2006
Web.
/ref> Exhibitions of ''After the Flood'' were also mounted in London, Venice, and Toronto, as well as in New Orleans. During this time, Polidori continued to document the restoration of

and these photographs, published in the three-volume ''Parcour Muséologique Revisité'' (2009), were included in his retrospective exhibition at the

. Polidori returned to Beirut in 2010 where he photographed the damaged rooms of the famous Hotel Petra, abandoned during Lebanon's civil war. The following year, he traveled to Paris to photograph the stored art collection of

Yves Saint Laurent (designer) Yves Henri Donat Mathieu-Saint-Laurent (1 August 1936 – 1 June 2008), referred to as Yves Saint-Laurent (, also , , ) or YSL, was a French fashion designer who, in 1962, founded his eponymous fashion label. He is regarded as being among the f ...

,"An interview with Robert Polidori." ''The Ground'', #02, 2 Nov. 2012
Web.
/ref> and to Venice to photograph the fashion label Bottega Veneta's fall 2011 campaign at the

Palazzo Papadopoli The Palazzo Papadopoli is a Baroque-style palace located on the Canal Grande of Venice, between Palazzo Giustinian Businello and Palazzo Donà a Sant'Aponal in the Sestiere of San Polo, Venice, Italy. The opposite building is the Palazzo Corner C ...

. From 2011 to 2015 Polidori also revisited and rephotographed Rio as well as Mumbai, including Dharavi's industrial street facade in a series of tracking shots. Exhibited as composite panoramic murals at Paul Kasmin Gallery (New York) in September 2016, these images were also published in the accompanying volume ''60 Feet Road'' by Steidl Verlag. Since 2015, Polidori and his family live in Ojai, California.

Equipment and approach

Polidori takes photographs with a large-format analog (photographic film) view-camera using 5x7, 8x10, or 11x14 inch color sheet negatives although, at times, uses a medium-format camera. Shot in natural light with up to 5-minute exposures, his images are described as "almost forensic" in detail. His work includes meticulously framed single images, and multiple images of tracking shots, which are scanned and composited later by digital means. Polidori describes his photographic approach as inquisitive: "When you point a camera at something, it is like asking a question. But the picture that emerges is like an answer." He also noted the paradox of photographic labor, "to deliver up to some surface an epitome of something that occurred as an instant in the continuum of time, and to somehow how have it represent all of time." Interested in creating commemorative images which serve memory or history, some series like "Havana" include portraiture,"Jonas Mekas / Robert Polidori: Portraits." ''Edwynn Houk Gallery''. 2012
Web.
/ref> while others like the Chernobyl ''Zones of Exclusion'' or New Orleans ''After the Flood'', although representative of their inhabitants, are devoid of people. In a review of the 2006 "New Orleans after the Flood" exhibition, John Updike described his approach: "Polidori, his work makes clear, loves the grave, delicate, and poignant beauty of architecture when the distracting presence of human inhabitants is eliminated from photographs." Noting the attendance of "more youthful African-Americans than usually make their way into the Met," he concluded: "It is for our children and our grandchildren—for the historical record... This is what it looked like; this is what we don’t want to happen again." This approach was debated within art blogs and criticized for contextual loss when one image was used in a Brazilian non-profit, anti-smoking campaign. At the time of his 2016 New York exhibition, Polidori commented: "Personally I am more attracted to photographs that attempt to be more objective and 'emblematic' of a subject’s qualities rather than a personal subjective interpretation of phenomena."

Recognition and contribution

The subject of ''Fotografic Portfolio Edition #41'', art director Tom Jacobi described Polidori as "a master of spatial aesthetics, while writer Von Jochen Siemens called him a "cultural detective for places with a story to tell". In a ''Domus Italiano'' review, Beatrice Zamponi wrote, he "trains his lens on the ruins of recent times, on dilapidated surroundings infused with profound aestheticism, turning them into a subtle instrument of social investigation." At the time of

retrospective, curator Paulette Gagnon commented on the beauty of Polidori's photographs, "the subtle colours and perfect harmony of line and material seem to endow the image with some of the power and appeal of paintings," as well as their power: "Concerned above all with the human condition, he explains situations – often crisis or disaster – that brings us back to life's essentials and shatter our complacency." Described in ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'', as "meditations on the concepts of transience and decay, the cracked and peeling walls revealing layers of history," Stephen Wallis concluded: "Polidori has never been purely a documentarian. His interest has always lain in making 'psychological portraits' of architectural spaces, which he sees as vessels for memories and as projections of the people who have lived there." At the time of the 2006 Metropolitan Museum's exhibition ''New Orleans after the Flood'', ''New York Times'' journalist Michael Kimmelman noted that Polidori's images "also express an archaeologist’s aspiration to document plain-spoken truth, and they are without most of the tricks of the trade that photographers exploit to turn victims into objects and pictures of pain into tributes to themselves."Kimmelman, Michael. "What’s Wrong With This Picture?" ''The New York Times'', 22 Sep. 2006
Web.
/ref> In ''The New York Review of Books'', author John Updike wrote, "it is the wrecked, mildewed interiors that take our eye and quicken our anxiety.... If the discomfort that ''After the Flood'' and ''Aftermath'' arouse contains an increment of discomfort at the poshness of the volumes and the aura of glamorous selflessness bestowed upon the photographers and their photographic appropriations, the record is indeed enhanced, for posterity to consult, and to use in ways we cannot imagine."

Exhibitions and collections

Polidori's work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the

: New Filmmakers Program (New York), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York),

museum (Berlin) and the Instituto Moreira Salles (São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro). His work has also been shown in private galleries around world including Bykert Gallery (New York), Edwynn Houk Gallery (Zurich and New York), Paul Kasmin Gallery (New York), Mary Boone Gallery (New York), Fontana Gallery (Amsterdam), Galerie Karsten Greve (Paris), Flowers Gallery (London), Nicholas Metivier Gallery (Toronto), Galerie de Bellefeuille (Montreal) and Galleria Carla Sozzani (Milan and Seoul). His work is in the collections of the

(New York),

Museum of Fine Arts (Houston) The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), is an art museum located in the Houston Museum District of Houston, Texas. With the recent completion of an eight-year campus redevelopment project, including the opening of the Nancy and Rich Kinder Build ...

(Los Angeles),

Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile, Los Angeles, California, Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Pa ...

(London),

(Paris),

Maison Européenne de la Photographie The Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP; European house of photography), located in the historic heart of Paris, is a center for contemporary photographic art opened in February 1996. Location and activities The Hotel Henault de Cantobre, ...

(Paris),

museum (Berlin), and Instituto Moreira Salles (São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro). His photographs are also included in the collections of

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

(New Haven), and

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...

(New York).

Awards

*1998 World Press Award for Art *1999 & 2000 Alfred Eisenstaedt Award for Magazine Photography, Architecture *2006 Deutscher Fotobuchpreis for ''After the Flood'' *2008 Liliane Bettencourt Prix de la Photographie for ''Parcours Muséologique Revisité''

Publications

*''Hotel Petra''. Steidl Verlag, 2016. *''60 Feet Road''. Steidl Verlag, 2016. *''RIO''. Steidl Verlag, 2015. *''Chronophagia: Selected Works 1984–2009'', Steidl Verlag, 2014. *''Eye & I''. Steidl Verlag, 2014. *''Points Between... Up Till Now'', Steidl Verlag, 2014. *''Parcours Muséologique Revisité'' (3 volumes), Steidl Verlag, 2009. *''Robert Polidori: Fotografias''. Instituto Moreira Salles, 2009. *''After the Flood''. Steidl Verlag, 2006. *''Robert Polidori’s Metropolis''. Steidl Verlag, 2005. *''Zones of Exclusion – Pripyat and Chernobyl'', Steidl Verlag, 2003. *''Havana''. Steidl Verlag, 2001. Photographic Collaborations * Gatier, Pierre-Louis, et al. ''The Levant: History and Archaeology in the Eastern Mediterranean''. Könemann, 2001. * Eberle, Todd, and Joaquim Paiva. ''Brasilia de 0 a 40 anos''. 2000. * Di Vita-Evrard, Ginette. ''Libya: The Lost Cities of the Roman Empire''. Könemann, 1999. * Pérouse de Montclos, Jean-Marie. ''Chateaux of the Loire Valley''. Könemann, 1997. * ''Sites Greco-Romaines de la Tripolitaine et Cyrénaïque''. 1997. * Pérouse de Montclos, Jean-Marie. ''Versailles''. Artabras, 1994.

References

External links

The Metropolitan Museum: "New Orleans after the Flood: Photographs by Robert Polidori." 2006.

''The New Yorker'': "Photos from the Archive: Robert Polidori’s Havana." 2014.

''The Ground'': "An interview with Robert Polidori." 2012.

* ttps://www.artsy.net/artist/robert-polidori ''Artsy'': "Robert Polidori."
Robert Polidori Website.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Polidori, Robert 1951 births Artists from Montreal Canadian photographers Living people