On February 12, the Camera Work Photo Gallery, founded in 1997 in the Charlottenburg neighborhood of Berlin, opened a new exhibition space in the heart of Berlin-Mitte. CWC (Camera Work Contemporary) Gallery occupies a historically charged building designed by the architect Alexander Beer. Built in 1928, it once served as a school for Jewish girls. The 500m² space, reserved for the work of contemporary photographers, painters and sculptors, will welcome retrospectives, thematic group exhibitions and shows organized in collaboration with other institutions and private collectors.
For its inaugural exhibition, the CWC presents an expansive selection of large-format color photographs by Robert Polidori. Some of the works are being shown for the first time.
A significant portion of the exhibition is dedicated to a structure central to the photographer’s career, the Château of Versailles, which Polidori photographed on several occasions from the 1980s through the 2000s. At the end of the 1980s, Polidori was given authorization to photograph the restoration of the Château, capturing a historical moment.
In Polidori’s photographs, the traces of time are sometimes magnified, sometimes revealed in all their violence. His tight framing and vivid colors bring a new perspective to whatever he photographs.
In these spaces devoid of human presence, silence reigns. A silence freighted with meaning. From Versailles to the shining Kremlin, from colorful Havana to ravaged New Orleans and Chernobyl, we sometimes struggle to find the right words to speak of things that were, and what remains of them. We make our way through these abandoned places, for once or forever, frozen between the past, the present and an uncertain future.
Robert Polidori (b. Montréal, Canada, 1951) lives and works in New York and Paris.
Eva Gravayat
Robert Polidori
Until April 21, 2012
CWC GALLERY
Auguststraße 11–13
10117 Berlin
