Robert Polidori

Elizabeth Culbert

In the 11 days following the Chernobyl catastrophe on April 26, 1986, more than 116,000 people were permanently evacuated from the area surrounding the nuclear power plant. Declared unfit for human habitation, the Zones of Exclusion includes the towns of Pripyat (established in the 1970s to house workers) and Chernobyl. In May 2001, Robert Polidori photographed what was left behind in the this dead zone. His richly detailed images move from the burned-out control room of Reactor 4, where technicians staged the experiment that caused the disaster, to the unfinished apartment complexes, ransacked schools and abandoned nurseries that remain as evidence of those who once called Pripyat home. Nearby, trucks and tanks used in the cleanup efforts rest in an auto graveyard, some covered in lead shrouds and others robbed of parts. Houseboats and barges rust in the contaminated waters of the Pripyat River. Foliage grows over the sidewalks and hides the modest homes of Chernobyl. In his large-scale photographs, Polidori captures the faded colors and desolate atmosphere of these two towns, producing haunting documents that present the reader with a rare view of not just a disastrous event, but a place and the people who lived there.

Sperrzonen - Pripjat und Tschernobyl

American Cars And Cuban Beats

Heroes Of The Revolution

Thomas J. Sugrue

Yves Marchand

Romain Meffre

Until the 1960s, Detroit was one of America's most important cities, a hub of industry with a population of almost two million and a skyline to rival that of any U.S. city. Its buildings were monuments to its success and vitality in the first half of the twentieth century. At the start of the twenty-first century, those same monuments are now ruins: the United Artists Theater, the Whitney Building, the Farwell Building and the once ravishing Michigan Central Station (unused since 1988) today look as if a bomb had dropped on Motor City, leaving behind the ruins of a once great civilization. In a series of weekly photographic bulletins for Time magazine called "Detroit's Beautiful, Horrible Decline," photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre have been revealing to an astonished America the scale of decay in Detroit. "The state of ruin is essentially a temporary situation that happens at some point, the volatile result of change of era and the fall of empires," write Marchand and Meffre. "Photography appeared to us as a modest way to keep a little bit of this ephemeral state." As Detroit's white middle class continues to abandon the city center for its dispersed suburbs, and its downtown high-rises empty out, these astounding images, which convey both the imperious grandeur of the city's architecture and its genuinely shocking decline, preserve a moment that warns us all of the transience of great epochs.

The Ruins of Detroit

In his fascinating images, star photographer Robert Polidori casts an objective glance at and behind the decaying facades of the Cuban capital. Accompanied by original Cuban music, which moves back and forth between deep melancholy and unbridled joie de vivre, the viewer can experience the soul of Cuba and the soul of Havana through the inhabitant's faces, architecture, and music. Music CDs: Authentic sounds of Cuba on four CDs, including original recordings from the clubs and streets of Havana.

original music from Cuba and photos by Robert Polidori

Moods of La Habana

From his images of the Chateau of Versailles under restoration to the faded grandeur of Havana, to scenes of devastation from Chernobyl after the nuclear explosion and a New Orleans ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, Robert Polidori is drawn to detritus, shattered worlds and elegant ruin. Often considered an architectural photographer, Polidori captures more than buildings: his highly detailed views of interiors evoke both the intimate and the mysterious, wherein the humanity of these photos is felt in its very absence, in the traces left behind in vacant spaces once inhabited. "Chronophagia" is an affordable sampling of Polidori's many famous projects. This handsome clothbound volume contains the artist's own selection of more than 100 photographs, from the classics to several rarely seen images. The result is a beautifully edited compendium of Polidori's 28-year career and a stunning visual exploration of the liminal space between past and present, of worlds on the brink of disappearance. Robert Polidori was born in Montreal in 1951 and 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 in New York.

Robert Polidori - Selected Works

New Yorker photographer Robert Polidori traveled to New Orleans shortly after Hurricane Katrina to record the destruction. His photos documenting the paradoxically beautiful wreckage are mementos for those who could not return-mapping their lives through the remains of their belongings and their homes.

After the Flood

Jean-Marie Pérouse de Montclos

Tracing the transformation of Louis XIII's modest hunting lodge into the spectacular showplace of the French monarchy, photographs of the architecture, interiors, and gardens include the most recent research on the architecturally innovative and influential palace.

Versailles

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.”

Robert Polidori: Hotel Petra

Eduardo Luis Rodríguez

Havana is a particularly rich setting for Polidori's inquiries. The curves and columns that line the streets refer to past eras and speak of the political, social and economic forces that have driven the city to its present condition.

Robert Polidori

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