Paolo Roversi is one of the greatest living legends of fashion photography. His lens has captured icons like Kate Moss, MaÅ‚gorzata Bela, and Naomi Campbell, while brands such as Dior and Giorgio Armani regularly seek his creative vision. The Paris exhibition at Palais Galliera, featuring 140 of his works, tells the story of Roversi’s consistent style, shaped through his lifelong quest for light and emotion.
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Paolo Roversi: Capturing Emotions
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The photographs of Paolo Roversi contain a certain paradox. Those that depict nudity teach me to define complete physical beauty as something through which character resonates. On the other hand, those that showcase clothes—often captured in half-light or slightly out of focus, thus somewhat incomplete—make a dress or shirt stand out as the most distinctive element of a collection. Few photographers are granted as much creative freedom when working on campaigns for the world's leading fashion houses. Yohji Yamamoto, Comme des Garçons, Dior, Giorgio Armani, and Alexander McQueen have been offering it to him without hesitation for decades. Why? I would bet it lies in this very paradox—few photographers capture an element of uniqueness in an apparently ordinary subject with such precision as Roversi can. For Roversi, clothing is more than just cut and material. It is also an interaction—with light, movement, and the body. Roversi himself says that photography, which is merely a technical reflection of reality, holds no value for him. A photograph must reveal something fleeting and previously unnoticed to him and, later, to the viewers. The moment of pressing the shutter button means that he has seen or felt (I assume these notions become synonymous in this instance) emotions, and it is precisely these emotions that the photographer seeks to encapsulate in his frame. The exhibition at Paris’s Palais Galliera, although showcasing his works from the past few decades, is not a typical retrospective. The selection resembles excerpts from an artistic journal created over the years, listing what has consistently been most important to Roversi in photography.
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Light as a Perspective-Shifting Force
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At the beginning, the most important thing was light. Listening to the photographer’s childhood memories, I understand why it determined Roversi's perspective on the world and art. Back then, there was no sign that young Paolo might want to spend time voluntarily in a darkroom—he was terrified of the dark. Observing the fleeting, transforming shadows on the ceiling that appeared at night from the streetlight filtering into his bedroom became his way of facing his fear. Sleepless nights in his hometown of Ravenna, Italy, were his first important lesson about the significance of light. Another one came from the words of French photographer Nadar, one of the first to use artificial lighting in his work: light is not something technical; it cannot be reduced to precise calculations of brightness and shadow. One must feel it, and this is what makes seeing familiar things from a new perspective possible. The combination of light and emotion essentially mirrors Roversi’s childhood experiences. As I walk through the rooms of the Palais Galliera, presenting a selection of his commercial and personal projects (including my favorite series of black-and-white nudes "Nudi," which reveal not only the physicality but also the psychology of the models), I have no doubt about how consistently Roversi has applied these lessons in his work to this day. Following the photographer's advice, I put aside technical thinking (for those who still want to know: Roversi achieves the sculptural, glowing quality of colors and shapes by working with daylight and often supplementing the lighting with a Mag-Lite flashlight) and follow the feeling that Roversi's light sanctifies and elevates, as if every time his lens, whether directed at the face of a supermodel or a jacket hanging on a lamp, points to a haloed, vibrating center of the universe.
Studio and Polaroid: How Roversi Photographs
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Although it’s easy to fall in love with Roversi’s poetic, sensual photography, his personal affair with the medium grew gradually. His mother, who was passionate about the arts—from painting to music—infected him with her interest. His more focused interest in imagery came indirectly, through film—Roversi was friends with Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni and often visited his film sets, occasionally taking photographs. The first important professional moment came in 1972, when the 25-year-old Roversi moved to Paris at the invitation of Peter Knapp, the artistic director of Elle magazine. Although he also began working as a reporter for the Huppert agency, he quickly became fully engrossed in fashion photography. Two years later, he started working as an assistant to British photographer Lawrence Sackmann, who became his mentor. Roversi developed his artistic language early. It doesn’t allow for outdoor settings or stagnant situations—his Paris studio, where he has photographed for over 30 years, is his private theater where anything can happen. Well, almost anything: there’s no room for haste. Fascinated by the photographs of Man Ray and Julia Margaret Cameron, Roversi adopted the technique of long exposures. Since 1980, he has most often worked with a large-format 8x10 Polaroid. These tools are what give his subjects depth, and makes their presence seem almost metaphysical.
Clothes, Bodies, and Characters: What Roversi Photographs
In 1980, Roversi experienced a professional breakthrough with the Dior Beauty campaign, which opened the doors for him to collaborate with the world’s top fashion brands and magazines. However, fashion photography has never been the ultimate goal for him. Regardless of what or who he’s photographing, Roversi treats each image as a portrait, aiming to show something beyond the aesthetic surface. He says that his fashion photographs are double portraits: the model wearing the clothes and the clothes being worn by the model. I agree, but I see them as completely integrated. The softness and blurring that are characteristic of Roversi’s photographs dissolve the boundaries between the different elements of styling, amplifying the impression that these are simply layers of the body. The body, stripped down as in the already mentioned "Nudi" series, is an important part of the photographer’s portfolio. Natalia Vodianova, Guinevere Van Seenus, Saskia De Brauw, Kate Moss: the same models—friends of his—frequently undress in front of him. The emotional connection builds an atmosphere of trust, and through this, it becomes easier to show and capture emotions. Roversi's nudes, for me, are the ultimate confirmation that it is precisely what he desires most. Just as clothes are not just a cut and material, the body is not merely anatomical protrusions and depressions. The way a model arches her back, exposes her breasts, or arranges her hands reflects an aspect of personality that resonates on the surface. But the character that Paris exhibition highlights the most is Roversi’s own. The selection of works is not surprising—instead, it confirms how consistent and cohesive his artistic world is. The lack of surprises, however, does not mean a lack of admiration. Roversi’s repetitive way of photographing in order to bring out the uniqueness of what he captures has continued to evoke it in me throughout the years.
The Paolo Roversi exhibition can be viewed until July 14 at Palais Galliera in Paris.