Eye & I, a recent book from Canadian photographer Robert Polidori, is a departure from his usual tone. Known for documenting interiors and exteriors, recording the traces of human intervention, Polidori’s career began in the 1980s, when he was commissioned to document the restoration of Versailles. Like many of his contemporaries, Polidori rejects the idea of the “decisive moment,” preferring the immobility of his photographs, thinking of rooms as, “metaphors and vessels of memory.”
In this collection of portraits, Polidori is working in the tradition of the 20th century humanist photographers. The photographs were taken during his many travels on commissions abroad, mainly in India and the Middle East. It begins with a vibrant series of Yemeni and Lebanese children, posing alone or in groups, as for the beautiful cover image of a child with his face covered in grease. Here they are sitting, squatting, standing , as in a piece of improvised theatre, playing along with the photographer’s lens. Helped by the warm colors that brighten the various settings, Polidori manages to discover a radiance and gentleness that contrasts with the usual visual representation of the lives of these people
Throughout the pages, we see the same smiles and same colors on the faces of older generations, workers, soldiers, merchants, armed civilians, the poor and the religious. Because Polidori remains sensitive to architecture and objects, he still has his subjects pose in the places that inspire him: the sidewalk, a shantytown, ruins, broken-down cars, dilapidated houses, a makeshift soccer field, an antique bottle shop. And finally, it is not far from what he loves, capturing the passage of time, and time passed, which can be private, historical, social or ecological. Somewhat standard but beautiful to touch, the portraits in Eye & I reveal the anthropological approach of every photographer of reality, including those who choose to represent its many laws through silence.
BOOK
Eye & I
Photographs by Robert Polidori
Steidl
192 pages
ISBN 978386930592948 euros
