185, Sainte-Catherine Ouest (corner Jeanne-Mance) , Montreal (Québec) , H2X 3X5

Press Release Why wouldn’t the walls have recorded and layered, one on top of the other, all the emotional vibes of the rooms’ successive occupants and visitors? That is the question that has obsessed photographer Robert Polidori for over twenty years, and that makes his photographs of interiors and exteriors so moving and haunting, long after we have seen them. … (read more)

Press Release

Why wouldn’t the walls have recorded and layered, one on top of the other, all the emotional vibes of the rooms’ successive occupants and visitors? That is the question that has obsessed photographer Robert Polidori for over twenty years, and that makes his photographs of interiors and exteriors so moving and haunting, long after we have seen them.

Considered one of the leading photographers of our time, Polidori transcends the limits of photography and captures traces of the human condition—paradoxically, in places that have usually been abandoned and are devoid of human presence. Each photograph amounts to a social portrait, revealing the soul of its various subjects, and layering both past and present in poignant works steeped in sorrow and beauty.

The exhibition offers a survey of Polidori’s practice through fifty-nine large colour photographs, including works from the main series he has produced in the last twenty-odd years, from 1985 up to 2007. First, the Versailles series, in progress since 1985, brings to light the successive restorations undergone by this highly symbolic site that is part of our collective memory, awakening in viewers a pervasive sense of history. The near-painterly Beirut (1994-1996), with its subtle colours and rendering of line and material, offers glimpses of the city’s ruin that foreshadow the apocalyptic visions of the series that would follow. Havana (1997-2000) attests to the dual-faceted urban reality - the splendid past of these sumptuous colonial homes and the dilapidated present state of the same houses. Pripyat and Chernobyl (2001) makes us all witnesses to the worst nuclear catastrophe in history, which occurred in 1986. It reverberates with exile, devastation and abandonment. The destruction is complete in the series New Orleans (2005-2006), produced in the months that followed the dreadful Hurricane Katrina.

Courtesy of the musée d'art contemporain de Montréal

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