  
SteidlRobert Polidori: After the FloodIntroduction by Jeff L. Rosenheim.
In late September 2005, Robert Polidori traveled to New Orleans to record the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina and by the city's broken levees. He found the streets deserted, and, without electricity, eerily dark. The next day he began to photograph, house by house: "All the places I went in, the doors were just open. They had been opened by what I collectively call Îthe army,' of maybe 20 National Guards from New Hampshire, 15 policemen from Minneapolis, 20 firefighters from New York... On maybe half of them or a third of them that I went in, I think that the occupants had been there prior. And some of them did leave certain funeral-like mementos before they left. Maybe right after the waters receded they had the chance to just--to go back to their place and just see, and realize there's nothing worth saving." Amidst all this, Polidori has found something worth saving, has created mementos for those who could not return, documenting the paradoxically beautiful wreckage. In classical terms, he has found ruins. The abandoned houses he recorded were still waterlogged as he entered and as he learned (by trial and error, a process that including finding a dead body) the language of signs and codes in which rescue workers had spray-painted each house's siding. He sees the resulting photographs as the work of a psychological witness, mapping the lives of the absent and deceased through what remains of their belongings and their homes.PUBLISHED BY:Steidl
LIST PRICE: US $90.00 CAD $108.00
FORMAT:Hardcover, 15.25 x 11.75 in. / 336 pgs / 582 color.
ISBN: 9783865212771 ISBN10: 3865212778
PUBLICATION DATE:11/15/2006
AVAILABILITY: In Stock: Order below or contact your local bookstore or museum shop.
D.A.P. DISTRIBUTION CODE:TRADE
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Metropolis BooksRobert Polidori's MetropolisWith Martin C. Pedersen and Criswell Lappin.
Not only is he one of the world's preeminent architecture photographers, Robert Polidori is also--as his popular book Havana proved--a master of urban portraiture. The Montreal-born photographer has made haunting studies of bombed-out buildings in Beirut, decaying New York tenements, Versailles rooms in dusty disarray, Brasilia's paean to spare 1950s modernism, and, most recently, the abandoned, contaminated cities of Chernobyl and Pripyat. Taken together, they add to his ongoing project: the interpretation of the interrupted urban landscape. This new monograph combines the eye of a celebrated photographer with the distinctive voice of an artist and adventurer. Each breathtaking image--meticulously selected by the photographer from his own personal archive--is accompanied by a compelling first person account, based on interviews conducted by Martin C. Pedersen, executive editor of Metropolis magazine. Polidori tells behind-the-scene stories about the making of his photographs, takes us to war-torn Beirut and Brasilia and other world capitals, talks about what makes a building photogenic, how he shoots buildings he doesn't like, his favorite architects, and his love of mosques. A look at the world's great cities as seen through the eyes of a sharp social observer--and a great photographer.PUBLISHED BY:Metropolis Books
LIST PRICE: US $65.00 CAD $78.00
FORMAT:Hardcover, 11.5 x 10.75 in. / 144 pgs / 93 color.
ISBN: 9781891024986 ISBN10: 1891024981
PUBLICATION DATE:11/02/2004
AVAILABILITY: In Stock: Order below or contact your local bookstore or museum shop.
D.A.P. DISTRIBUTION CODE:TRADE
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SteidlRobert Polidori: HavanaEdited by Elizabeth Culbert. Essay by Eduardo Luis Rodriguez.
Robert Polidori, often considered an architectural photographer, is in fact a photographer of habitat. On the surface his subjects are buildings, but at the core his lens is focused on the remnants and traces of living he finds scattered in hallways, left in back rooms and worn on facades. His spectacular color photographs are presented here in an appropriately oversized volume that capture both their monumentality and their attention to detail. 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. Through his rigorous and sensitive examination--facilitated by a sense of color and composition that makes his photographs feel like vivid memories--Polidori delicately peels away the patina of daily living and reveals the juxtapositions that create a city's identity. His photographs define the idea of faded grandeur. In this city the peddler lives where the countess once resided; children dance and tumble where merchants conducted their business. Each photograph is a discovery and a fragment of the city's biography.PUBLISHED BY:Steidl
LIST PRICE: US $75.00 CAD $90.00
FORMAT:Hardcover, 15.25 x 11.75 in. / 160 pgs / 152 color.
ISBN: 9783882433333 ISBN10: 3882433337
PUBLICATION DATE:08/02/2001
AVAILABILITY: In Stock: Order below or contact your local bookstore or museum shop.
D.A.P. DISTRIBUTION CODE:TRADE
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Steidl/Pace/MacGill GalleryRobert Polidori: Zones Of ExclusionPhotographs by Robert Polidori.
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.PUBLISHED BY:Steidl/Pace/MacGill Gallery
LIST PRICE: US $75.00 CAD $90.00
FORMAT:Hardcover, 15 x 11.75 in. / 112 pgs / 190 color.
ISBN: 9783882439212 ISBN10: 3882439211
PUBLICATION DATE:07/02/2003
AVAILABILITY: Temporarily out of stock. Check your local bookstore or museum shop for copies.
D.A.P. DISTRIBUTION CODE:TRADE
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Steidl Photography InternationalRobert Polidori: Transitional States
In Transitional States Robert Polidori delivers a sublime photographic tract on architectural revisionism by charting the decades-long conservation project at Versailles. One of the world's largest palaces, and a symbol of absolute monarchy in France, Versailles is a supremely apropos building through which to address matters of revisionism, having been subjected to four building campaigns (between 1664 and 1697) by Louis XIV alone, and several modifications since.
So what does restoring a room really entail? Does restoration intend the precise recreation of what once was? And if so, how much "creativity" goes into determining a room's original condition? The curatorial decisions steering this project inevitably betray political and aesthetic affiliations that have morphed over the course of the restoration, and Polidori has been in attendance to record them. Photographed over a period of 25 years, the ever-evolving phases of Versaille's grandeur are here laid bare for the reader to decode and admire.
Robert Polidori was born in Montreal in 1951 and lives in New York City. His work has been shown in Paris, Brasília, New York, Los Angeles and Minneapolis among many other places. A staff photographer for the New Yorker, Polidori has received numerous honors, including a World Press Award for his coverage of the construction of the Getty Museum and two Alfred Eisenstaedt Awards for his work in Havana and Brasilia. His bestselling books Havana, Zones of Exclusion: Pripyat and Chernobyl and After the Flood are published by Steidl.
PUBLISHED BY:Steidl Photography International
LIST PRICE: US $100.00 CAD $120.00
FORMAT:Hardback, 13 x 13 in. / 240 pgs / 160 color.
ISBN: 9783865217028 ISBN10: 3865217028
PUBLICATION DATE:06/30/2009
AVAILABILITY: Not yet published in the U.S. Retailers may backorder through D.A.P.
D.A.P. DISTRIBUTION CODE:TRADE
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