The biggest supermodels have posed for her. Far from being reduced to a fleeting image, their presence in her photographs is intense and seems strangely enduring. It must also be said that "each of her fashion photographs is a portrait."
For Paolo Roversi, each photograph must, in fact, be a portrait, explains Sylvie Lécallier, curator of the exhibition dedicated to him at the Palais Galliera: “By encouraging the model to abandon conventional poses in favor of a state of surrender, Roversi does not give them a stereotypical role to play: they pose as they are, inhabiting the space through the simplicity of their presence. Like Nadar, Roversi seeks ‘the most familiar, the most favorable, the most intimate likeness’¹. Taken in the studio in daylight, with a very long exposure time, Roversi’s portraits, like Nadar’s, have an intensity that flash photography cannot achieve.”
This intensity, which shines through in the gaze of his models—such as the incandescent eyes of Natalia, Kate, or Kirsten—stems from the fact that the Italian photographer, as he explained in 2020 on France Culture 2 , far from "ever wanting to tell a story," relies entirely on the subject and their sensations. "In a photograph, I seek to unveil the mystery of beauty ," to go "beyond the surface of things, beyond the body, into the interior, to discover a little more of the subject's truth . "
Beyond the surface
Born in Ravenna in 1947 and living in Paris since 1973, Paolo Roversi has worked for the most prestigious magazines ( Elle , Depeche Mode , Vogue, Luncheon , etc.) and the greatest fashion designers, including Yohji Yamamoto, Romeo Gigli, and Rei Kawakubo for Comme des Garçons. Throughout his career, he has sought this timeless beauty. Captured in the studio, with Polaroid and large-format cameras, in subtle effects of shadow, light, and blur, it reveals itself, according to him, as an "absent presence" that constitutes the very mystery and miracle of photography.
Cultivating a “ dreamlike aesthetic ,” Roversi played with the whiteness of milky skin (like Polaroid emulsion) and, through the use of filters, splashes of color that enhanced faces and hands (campaign for Yamamoto Fall/Winter 1985-1986 or Alexander McQueen 2021). The hybridization of color and black and white (a mixed process discovered by accident in 1990) or the use of flashlight lighting (for the Comme des Garçons Spring/Summer 1997 collection) are part of this same aesthetic, as is the use of blur which, from the mid-1980s onward, gave his images a “vaporous, timeless, evanescent quality, like in a dream . ”
- Françoise Heilbrun, in the exhibition catalogue Nadar, the creative years: 1854-1860 shown at the Musée d'Orsay in 1994.
- Quote from an interview broadcast on the show The Big Table on France Culture on October 14, 2020.
- Anne de Mondenard, in the exhibition catalogue.
France paris
“Paolo Roversi”
Palais Galliera – Paris Fashion Museum
10, avenue Pierre-Ier - de-Serbie, Paris 16th
From 16 March to 14 July 2024
