Misplaced Pages

Robert Polidori

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by HeatherBlack (talk | contribs) at 14:51, 27 April 2017 (changed sequence of quotes). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 14:51, 27 April 2017 by HeatherBlack (talk | contribs) (changed sequence of quotes)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Robert Polidori
Born(1951-02-10)February 10, 1951
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
NationalityCanada-France-USA
Known forPhotographic Art

Robert Polidori (1951) is a Canadian-American photographer best 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 (New York), Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Martin-Gropius-Bau museum (Berlin), and Instituto Moreira Salles (São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro). His photographs are also included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (New York), New Orleans Museum of Art, J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles), Victoria & Albert Museum (London), Château de Versailles, Centre Pompidou (Paris), and Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris), as well as many private collections.

Described as one of "most esteemed practitioners of large-scale photography," Polidori has photographed the restoration of the Château de Versailles since the early 1980s. He has also made a photographic record of the architecture and interiors of Havana, the inner urban habitats of Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, and Amman, the devastation of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, the emptied buildings from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and the shell-shocked structures of war-torn Beirut. At the time of the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal 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."

Life and career

Born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, in 1951, Polidori moved to the United States at age 10 and, as a youth, lived in Seattle, New Orleans, and Yellow Springs, Ohio. Inspired by Michael Snow's avant-garde Wavelength (1967 film), in 1969 he moved to New York City to study film making. There he was hired by the legendary Jonas Mekas as his assistant at the Anthology Film Archives. During this time, Polidori completed four experimental films, exhibited in 1975 at the Whitney Museum of Art, and, in 1980, graduated with a Masters of Arts in film from State University of New York (Buffalo). First introduced to still photography within the film-making process, in 1982 he purchased a large-format camera and, interested in rooms as "metaphors for human frailty", photographed abandoned and apartments on New York's Lower East Side. In 1983 he moved to Paris and, inspired by Frances Yates' The Art of Memory and how photography serves memory, Polidori began to document the restoration of Château de Versailles. Increasing known for his photographs of interiors, Polidori photographed Havana’s architectural heritage for the The New Yorker magazine. In 1998 he joined The New Yorker as a staff photographer and images from the Cuban series were later published in the book Havana (2002). Increasingly interested in inhabitant- or "auto-constructed" urban growth, Polidori photographed Brasilia, Dubai, and Mumbai. In May 2001, he photographed the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear power plant and nearby ghost town of Pripyat, Ukraine, and these images were later published as Zones of Exclusion – Pripyat and Chernobyl (2004).

In 2002 Polidori was described by Martin C. Pedersen, editor of Metropolis (architecture magazine) as "a keen observer of the built world". Commissioned to photograph Detroit's Michigan Central Station, the magazine later published his urban images as Robert Polidori's Metropolis (2005). As staff photographer for The New Yorker in 2005 Polidori photographed damaged homes and buildings in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina as well as the city's restoration in 2006. Published as After the Flood (2006), an exhibition of these images at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York). 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 Château de Versailles, and these photographs, published in the three-volume Parcour Muséologique Revisité (2009), were included in his retrospective exhibition at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal. In 2010 he photographed the damaged rooms of Beirut's famous Hotel Petra, abandoned during Lebanon’s civil war. The following year, Polidori traveled to Paris where he photographed the stored art collection of Yves Saint Laurent (designer) prior to auction at the Grand Palais. He also photographed the fashion label Bottega Veneta's fall 2011 campaign at the Palazzo Papadopoli in Venice. In 2012 Polidori exhibited with his mentor Jonas Mekas at Edwynn Houk Gallery (New York). His 2016 solo exhibition at Paul Kasmin Gallery (New York) included composite murals of Mumbai published in Sixty Feet Road.

Throughout his career, Polidori freelanced as a magazine photographer and, from 1998 to 2006, was staff photographer for The New Yorker. In 2010 he obtained American citizenship and, in 2016, lived in 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, 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 "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 attendees as “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 contextural loss when a "Katrinia" 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 the German publication 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 Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal 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." In the 2016 review in The Wall Street Journal, Stephen Wallis described the Hotel Petra series as "meditations on the concepts of transience and decay, the cracked and peeling walls revealing layers of history." He 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 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." In another exhibition review author John Updike wrote, "it is the wrecked, mildewed interiors that take our eye and quicken our anxiety." Published in The New York Review of Books, he praised Polidori’s contribution: “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 Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Martin-Gropius-Bau 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 the 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 Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Museum of Modern Art (New York), New Orleans Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Victoria & Albert Museum (London), Château de Versailles, Centre Pompidou (Paris), Maison Européenne de la Photographie (Paris), Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris), Martin-Gropius-Bau museum (Berlin), and Instituto Moreira Salles (São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro). His photographs are also included in the collections of Princeton University, Yale University (New Haven), and New York University (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, 2016.
  • 60 Feet Road. Steidl, 2016.
  • RIO. Steidl, 2015.
  • Chronophagia: Selected Works 1984-2009. Steidl, 2014.
  • Eye & I. Steidl, 2014.
  • Points Between... Up Till Now. Steidl, 2014.
  • Parcour Muséologique Revisité (3 Volumes). Steidl, 2009.
  • Robert Polidori: Fotografias. Instituto Moreira Salles, 2009.
  • After the Flood. Steidl, 2006.
  • Robert Polidori’s Metropolis. Steidl, 2005.
  • Zones of Exclusion – Pripyat and Chernobyl. Steidl, 2004.
  • Havana. Steidl, 2002.

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

  1. ^ "Robert Polidori CV." RobertPolidori.com. Web.
  2. ^ "Gallery Artists: Robert Polidori." Edwynn Houk Gallery. Web.
  3. ^ Wallis, Stephen. "Edward Burtynsky and Robert Polidori’s Shared Visions." Wall Street Journal: WSJ. Magazine, 12 Sep. 2016. Web.
  4. ^ Zamponi, Beatrice. "Robert Polidori." Domas Italiano, 18 Nov. 2016. Web.
  5. ^ Gagnon, Paulette. "Sounding Reality." Translated by Judith Terry. Robert Polidori. Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal/Steidl, 2009. pp. 1-7. Print.
  6. ^ Siemens, Von Jochen. "When buildings start to tell a story.Fotografic Portfolio #41, 2010, pp. 4-8. Print.
  7. ^ Gerber Klein, Michèle. "Artists in Conversation: Robert Polidori." Bomb Magazine, 99, Spring 2007. Web.
  8. ^ Pedersen, Martin C. "Robert Polidori on Making Pictures, DIY Cities, and the Pull of India." CommonEdge, 15 Sep. 2016. Web.
  9. Polidori, Robert. Havana. Steidl, 2002. Print.
  10. Polidori, Robert. Zones of Exclusion – Pripyat and Chernobyl. Steidl, 2004. Print.
  11. Pedersen, Martin C. "Robert Polidari's Metropolis." Robert Polidori's Metropolis, 2004, p5. Print.
  12. ^ "An interview with Robert Polidori." The Ground, #02, 2 Nov. 2012. Web.
  13. "The Collaborations: Robert Polidori." Bottega Veneta. Web.
  14. ^ "Jonas Mekas / Robert Polidori: Portraits." Edwynn Houk Gallery. 2012. Web.
  15. "Polidori and people pictures." Alec Soth's Archived Blog, 7 Jan. 2007. Web.
  16. MacCash, Doug. "Robert Polidori defends his post-K decisions." NOLA, 20 Jul. 2007. Web.
  17. Jacobi, Tom. "Introduction." Fotografic Portfolio #41, 2010, p. 1. Print.
  18. Kimmelman, Michael. "What’s Wrong With This Picture?" The New York Times, 22 Sep. 2006. Web.
  19. Updike, John. "After Katrina." The New York Review of Books, 30 Nov. 2006. Web.

External links

Categories: