Robert Polidori

An exclusive look into the preparations behind the Naples in Paris exhibition at the Louvre, beautifully captured by the renowned photographer Robert Polidori. From June 2023 to January 2024, the Musée du Louvre in Paris welcomed sixty major masterpieces from the Museo di Capodimonte, on loan for the exhibition Naples in Paris: The Louvre Hosts the Museo di Capodimonte. The former Italian royal palace, which once served as a hunting lodge for Bourbon monarchs, is now one of the largest museums in Italy holding one of the continent’s most important collections of Italian paintings, drawings, and sculptures. Among the artworks featured are the famously enigmatic Antea by Parmigianino, a poignant painting of the Crucifixion by Masaccio, The Transfiguration of Christ by Giovanni Bellini, and preparatory cartoons by Raphael and Michelangelo. On the occasion of this historic artistic exchange, acclaimed photographer Robert Polidori was granted exclusive access to the preparations of the exhibition in the Louvre’s prestigious Grand Galerie. Known for his unique images of architecture and interiors, Polidori exquisitely captures the process and inner workings of the arrival, set-up, and display of the artworks. Part photography monograph, part art history book, this unique publication reveals the hidden workings behind one of the most significant collaborative efforts among major museums in recent years.

Following the reopening of 30 Avenue Montaigne in 2022, this exquisite volume offers a unique look into the metamorphosis of the House of Dior s legendary Parisian headquarters via images captured by acclaimed photographer Robert Polidori. or over two years, the iconic hotel particulier underwent a radical transformation, during which Polidori was granted exclusive access to the site for the entire duration of the restoration documenting the original state, the demolition phase, and the reconstruction of Dior s couture house. Registering the past, present, and future of the spaces within a single frame, Polidori s images capture layers of history in extraordinary detail. Enriched with archival documents, his impressive iconography offers an extraordinary visual experience recorded in one of the nest pieces of bookmaking, beautifully printed on luxurious European papers.

The French woodwork purveyor Feau and Cie has supplied architects, designers, and museums with period paneling since 1875. Featuring documents, drawings, plaster models, panels, and antique boiserie rooms, its archive of 25,000 pieces many from the eighteenth century and Art Deco era is an unrivaled source of inspiration for re-creating heirloom spaces as well as for constructing spectacular contemporary pieces. Though the house remains best known for its magical historic rooms, it has collaborated with architects and decorators on original projects since its beginnings, and today s design greats including Michael S. Smith, Brian J. McCarthy, and Robert Couturier, among others regularly call upon the firm for elaborate projects. In this first book of the firm s work, Feau and Cie reveals a selection of its most exceptional projects, from magnificent historical abodes to daring modern creations, including a palace in Tuscany and residences in Paris, London, New York, Malibu, and Atlanta. Dazzling images of finished interiors are accompanied by details of panels, doors, and decor, while exclusive photographs by lensman Robert Polidori explore the house s Parisian atelier. The unique savoir faire of joiners, sculptors, gilders, and painter-decorators shines through in this visual celebration of decorative masterpieces, which is bound to delight design masters and art lovers alike.

This book presents 35 photos of the Getty Center taken shortly before the 1997 opening of its new multipurpose complex designed by Richard Maier. Published to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the center, the book reveals behind-the-scenes views of the building as objects from J. Paul Getty's painting, sculpture and decorative arts collections were being installed inside it. In September 1997 the New Yorker commissioned Robert Polidori (born 1951) to photograph Maier's building. Within 48 hours he had made images of its exterior but was dissatisfied. Polidori wanted to document the museum's interior, and proceeded to photograph the rooms in which artworks were either freshly installed or still being so. The resulting photos show the museum in the process of taking shape, expose the mechanics of curatorship.

This book is Robert Polidori's portrait of the interiors of the now demolished Hotel Petra in Beirut, a grand icon of the city's prewar history. The Hotel Petra was once one of the most popular hotels in Beirut, conveniently located in the city center adjacent to the Grand Theatre. After the Lebanese Civil War of 1975-90, Rafiq al-Hariri founded a holding company, Solidere, whose goal was the selective demolition and reconstruction of downtown Beirut's urban fabric. In 1992 the Hotel Petra was set aside for later restoration, and from that moment essentially cut off from any human intervention. Polidori gained access to this site in 2010, and was transfixed by what he discovered: "It's truly rare to find examples of such undisturbed decomposition," he explains. "Usually the normal wear and tear of human traffic would violate and destroy the surfaces of such a delicate ecosystem of layered paint. I came to view these walls as a living process of slow decay whose end effect closely resembled the concerns of many contemporary abstract painters ... only in this case their genesis was not fixed or intentional, but the gradual summation of several painters and workmen modifying the wall surfaces at different points in time ... I was quite taken by their beauty and was moved to photograph them for posterity."

In his new book, Robert Polidori presents us with a large-format photograph of a city block in an improvisational, auto-constructed settlement in Mumbai, India. In an almost seamless progression that appears to expand like an accordion or folding-screen, the photograph is composed of multiple images imperceptibly overlaid and welded together in a complex process to form a panoramic view. Applying remote sensing techniques that are normally used in space cartography to street photography, Polidori ventures a photographic attempt to come to terms with the phenomena of adjacencies, observing and beholding what's next to what. In this way he minutely scans the urban landscape, recording the precarious and temporary nature of the provisional and yet psychologically rich and in fact highly individualized dwellings. Robert Polidori was born in Montreal in 1951 and today lives in Los Angeles. His work has been the subject of exhibitions in New York, London, Brazil and Montreal, among others. He received the World Press Photo Award in 1997, the Alfred Eisenstaedt Award for Magazine Photography in 1999 and 2000 and Communication Arts awards in 2007 and 2008. In 2006, Polidori's series of photographs of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina was exhibited at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. His bestselling books Havana (2003), Zones of Exclusion--Pripyat and Chernobyl (2003), After the Flood (2006), Parcours Mus ologique Revisit (2009), Some Points in Between ... Up Till Now (2010) and Eye and I (2014) were published by Steidl.

Beirut. Tripoli. Havana. Chernobyl. New Orleans. Rio. Amman. Versailles. Over the course of thirty years, Robert Polidori has travelled the world photographing places with names so familiar we feel we know them already. On the occasion of his first museum retrospective in the United States, at Faulconer Gallery, Iowa, Polidori has selected more than one hundred photographs for this volume that challenge our preconceptions, mining both the accoutrement and psychology of space for what they tell us—and for what they withhold—about history, memory, identity and time.

Robert Polidori is known for his large format photographs of habitats and rooms saturated with the traces of human intervention. In EYE and I, he turns the lens around to reveal the portraits of people he has encountered in his work of over thirty years photographing around the world, particularly in the Middle East and India. These instantaneous portraits of mutual recognition reveal the photographed subject and the photographer intersecting with each other in a fleeting gaze of mutual regard. Robert Polidori was born in Montreal in 1951 and lives in New York City. His work has been the subject of exhibitions in New York, London, Brazil, Montreal, among other places. He received the World Press Photo Award in 1997, the Alfred Eisenstaedt Award for Magazine Photography in 1999 and 2000, and Communication Arts awards in 2007 and 2008. In 2006, Polidori’s series of photographs of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His bestselling books Havana (2003), Zones of Exclusion—Pripyat and Chernobyl (2003), After the Flood (2006), Parcours Muséologique Revisité (2009) and Some Points in Between... Up Till Now (2010) are published by Steidl.

In Parcours Mus ologique Revisit Robert Polidori delivers a sublime photographic tract on architectural revisionism by charting the decades-long conservation project at Versailles. One of the world's largest palaces, and a symbol of absolute monarchy in France, Versailles is a supremely apropos building through which to address matters of revisionism, having been subjected to four building campaigns (between 1664 and 1697) by Louis XIV alone, and several modifications since. So what does restoring a room really entail? Does restoration intend the precise recreation of what once was? And if so, how much "creativity" goes into determining a room's original condition? The curatorial decisions steering this project inevitably betray political and aesthetic affiliations that have morphed over the course of the restoration, and Polidori has been in attendance to record them. Photographed over a period of 25 years, the ever-evolving phases of Versaille's grandeur are here laid bare for the reader to decode and admire. Robert Polidori was born in Montreal in 1951 and lives in New York City. His work has been shown in Paris, Bras lia, New York, Los Angeles and Minneapolis among many other places. A staff photographer for the New Yorker, Polidori has received numerous honors, including a World Press Award for his coverage of the construction of the Getty Museum and two Alfred Eisenstaedt Awards for his work in Havana and Brasilia. His bestselling books Havana, Zones of Exclusion: Pripyat and Chernobyl and After the Flood are published by Steidl.