Robert Polidori

Robert Polidori (b. 1951) is one of the most celebrated contemporary photographers, whose large-scale color photographs of interiors, architectural spaces, and cities in transformation have secured him a substantial international reputation. Born in Montreal, Canada, Polidori grew up in North America and eventually settled in New York, where he has built his mature practice over decades of sustained work. His photographs occupy a distinctive position within contemporary photography, combining documentary rigor with a painterly sense of light and space that has drawn comparison with the great tradition of European interior painting.

Polidori's earliest major project brought him to Versailles, where he began an extended photographic engagement with the palace during its ongoing restoration. Working over many years and returning repeatedly, he produced an unprecedented visual record of the great French royal residence, capturing not only its finished ceremonial spaces but also the working restoration rooms, storage areas, and behind-the-scenes environments that few visitors ever see. This project established Polidori's reputation as a photographer capable of transforming architectural spaces into deeply layered visual documents.

Polidori has since produced several extended projects devoted to cities in significant states of change. His photographs of Havana capture the extraordinary interiors of the Cuban capital with a sensitivity to color, deterioration, and the accumulated layers of history that define the city. His photographs of Pripyat and the evacuated zone around Chernobyl document the abandoned interiors of the Soviet town frozen in time by the 1986 nuclear disaster. His powerful series on New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina bore witness to the devastation of the city with a combination of unflinching observation and elegiac restraint that made those pictures among the most affecting American photographs of their moment.

Polidori's photographs have appeared regularly in the New Yorker, where he has been on staff as a photographer, and his work has been published in numerous acclaimed monographs. He is represented by Edwynn Houk Gallery and his photographs are held in major museum collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Getty, and the Whitney Museum. He continues to develop his practice through ambitious ongoing projects that extend his signature vision of the built environment across new geographies and subjects.