A Master of Fashion Photography Who Embraces Accidents

"Unless you've been paying close attention to fashion magazines such as W, i-D, Luncheon, and Vogue in all its international editions over the past few decades, there's a good chance you haven't seen Paolo Roversi's photography. But in those pages he has been a singularly sophisticated and striking presence; at a time when many of his most famous peers in fashion photography are either dead or cancelled, Roversi, at seventy-eight, remains an active master of the genre."

"Largely self-taught, the Italian-born, Paris-based Roversi has been working regularly since the early nineteen-eighties. He's survived because he's always emphasized the art in commerce. Like Irving Penn in his later years, Roversi is especially inspired by avant-garde designers, including John Galliano, Romeo Gigli, Yohji Yamamoto, and Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garcons. His views of their unconventional garments are painterly and romantic-expressionist evocations rather than detailed transcriptions of the clothes."

"Shown alongside his fashion work are portraits and nudes, often featuring the same models he's already photographed fully dressed. These pictures are frank, usually frontal, and remarkably tender, recalling Julia Margaret Cameron's soft-focus, sepia-toned images of friends and relatives from the Victorian era. There's an intimacy and sensitivity to Roversi's work that never feels exploitative. The body is always an extension of a portrait, not an isolated sculptural form."

Paolo Roversi, an Italian-born, Paris-based photographer, has worked regularly since the early 1980s and remains active at seventy-eight. He pushes the Polaroid process to its technical and expressive limits to produce painterly, soft-focus images. His fashion photographs treat avant-garde garments as romantic-expressionist evocations rather than literal transcriptions. He also creates frank, tender portraits and nudes that emphasize intimacy and sensitivity without exploitation, treating the body as an extension of portraiture. Exhibitions at the Palais Galliera and Pace gallery and a Paris catalogue reflect renewed attention to his vibrant work blending art and commerce.

Read at The New Yorker