Robert Polidori at Camera Work

The exhibition focuses on Robert Polidori‘s (b. 1951, Montreal) extensive documentation of the renovations and restoration work in the Palace of Versailles, which he intensively photographically accompanied over a period of 25 years. Through the sumptuous chambers, the thorough restorations of the Palace during the 1980s as well as through the precise details, that have been destined as the photographic subjects of Robert Polidori, the viewer gets an insight into the cautiously preserved past of this history-charged place. Simultaneously, the history connects with the present and lets the glamorous aesthetic of this carefully decorated, embroidered althoughbygone feudal world be experienced in a new way.

A graceful tranquillity, an accurately composed aesthetic, a colorful complexity and strength lives in the photographs of Robert Polidori. The attention to detail given to the large-format works makes it possible for the viewer to literally scan the surface structures and shapes with his eye: a manifold image leading to a totally new experience of the rooms. The touch point of the Old and the New is recurring as a motive in Robert Polidori’s oevre. Subtly he understands it to feel out the point of intersection between the Old and the New and to search for the »emblematic moment« of a space in doing so – the unity of past and present. The chambers photographed by him, even though entirely devoid of people, tell multifarious stories through their unique patina or their court splendor. Thereby the photograph is a master of spatial aesthetic and arrangement. His photographs are complex still lives building a setting for the viewer’s imagination through their colorfulness and incomparable quality. The peaceful silence and the attention to detail in Robert Polidori’s works implies an exceptional power.