Paolo Roversi goes behind the scenes at his magnificent exhibition at the Palazzo Galliera

Paolo Roversi goes behind the scenes at his magnificent exhibition at the Palazzo Galliera

The Palais Galliera is devoting its first solo exhibition in Paris to the great photographer Paolo Roversi. Through 140 exceptional works, the public is invited to explore fifty years of work by an artist with a unique sensibility.

Featuring never-seen work, the photographer’s first Parisian solo show takes visitors on a journey through his extraordinary five-decade career. Curated by the Palais Galliera, the exhibition traces the rise of a fashion photographer with a unique sensibility.

Over 140 exceptional shots – both prints and Polaroids selected from his archives – demonstrate the full range of his collaborations with prestigious magazines. Thanks to his aesthete’s gaze, each image is infused with a melancholy grace whose poetry goes beyond trends and reaches for posterity.

Paolo Roversi at the Palais Galliera

He is not, strictly speaking, a fashion photographer. Since moving to Paris, in 1973, Paolo Roversi has built up an œuvre with and through fashion, capturing, beneath all the industry’s noise and agitation, a melancholy poetry that imprints itself on the memory.

As curated by the Palais Galliera, this first Parisian retrospective of his work underlines his total commitment to a personal necessity, an indefatigable search for beauty involving no pre-established method or recipe. Preparation for the show began before, and was delayed by, COVID-19, during which time it was in search of a title; in the end, its curators decided not to bother with one.

“It could have been called A Story Without a Narrative Thread, says Roversi, “because, like my work, there’s no red thread that weaves through it. Sylvie Lécallier and I went through my archives, took the time to think things through together, and chose a certain number of images that we decided not to organize chronologically.”

Fashion photography between abstraction and poetry

Setting out to give space to the emotions triggered by the photographs, and seeking to avoid smothering them with too much pedagogy or narration, Lécallier’s curation allows a specificity of Roversi’s work to emerge without labouring the point. “Mixing different periods of his work brings out the timeless character of his photographs,” she explains.