Robert Polidori - Böcker

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.

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.