The greatest models have passed before his lens. Yet far from being reduced to a passing image, their presence is intense and strangely enduring. It's also clear that "every one of his fashion photographs is a portrait".
For Paolo Roversi, every photograph must be a portrait, explains Sylvie Lécallier, curator of the exhibition devoted to him at the Palais Galliera: "By making the model abandon conventional poses in favor of a state of abandon, Roversi doesn't give him a stereotyped role to play: he poses as he is, inhabiting the space with the simplicity of his presence. Like Nadar, Roversi seeks "the most familiar, the most favorable, the most intimate resemblance". 1. Shot in the studio in daylight, with a very long exposure time, Roversi's portraits, like Nadar's, have an intensity that flash photography does not allow."
This intensity, evident in the eyes of his models - such as the incandescent Natalia, Kate and Kirsten - is due to the fact that, as he explained to France Culture 2 in 2020, far from "ever wanting to tell a story", the Italian photographer relies entirely on the subject and its sensations. " In a photo, I seek to unveil the mystery of beauty", to go "beyond the surface of things, beyond the body, inside, to discover a little more of the truth of the subject".
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...) and the greatest fashion designers, including Yohji Yamamoto, Romeo Gigli and Rei Kawakubo for Comme des Garçons. Captured in the studio, with Polaroid and large-format cameras, in subtle effects of shadow, light and blur, it is revealed, in his view, as an "absent presence " 2 that is the mystery and miracle of photography.
Cultivating a "dreamlike aesthetic" 3, Roversi plays with the whiteness of milky skin (like Polaroid emulsion) and, through the use of filters, with spots of color enhancing faces and hands (campaigns for Yamamoto autumn-winter 1985-1986 or Alexander McQueen 2021). The hybridization of color and black & white (a mixed process discovered by accident in 1990) and the use of flashlights (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 onwards, gives his images a "vaporous, timeless, evanescent quality, as if in a dream " 3...
- Françoise Heilbrun, in the catalog for the exhibition Nadar, les années créatrices: 1854-1860 shown at the Musée d'Orsay in 1994.
- Quote from an interview broadcast on France Culture's La Grande Table program on October 14, 2020.
- Anne de Mondenard, in the exhibition catalog.
France - Paris
"Paolo Roversi
Palais Galliera - Paris Fashion Museum
10, avenue Pierre-Ier-de-Serbie, Paris 16e
March 16 to July 14, 2024
