Robert Polidori: Topographical Histories

(Hardback)

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Description

Roobert Polidori has been making books at Steidl for over 18 years, and for many of his visits he lodged in an apartment adjacent to the publishing house. To the left of this, at Dstere Strae 6, stands a small humble house, not only the oldest dwelling in Gttingen but, dating back to 1310, one of the oldest half-timbered houses in all of Germany. Miraculously never demolished over the centuries (just altered, repaired and patched up), it has now been restored by Gerhard Steidl and today houses the Gnter Grass Archive, part of the University of Gttingen.Topographical Histories presents Polidori's 2016 photos of the interior walls of the building, whose glorious crumbling layers-four-teenth-century structures of wattle and daub, clay bricks and plaster, as well as remnants of paint and wallpaper from different centuries-bear witness to living history. Polidori focuses on the subtle colorations and depth and complexity of these surfaces, creating an unconventional, painterly architectural portrait.It is paradoxical but often times it is a necessity for one to lie in order to show the truth. Robert Polidori

Reviews

Spend a few minutes with Topographical Histories, and you will never, I promise, look at a wall--even a simple, white one, in your office, at home, or in the cheap hotel room where you stayed the last time you traveled--in quite the same way again.--Christopher Irmscher "The Od Review"

Author Bio

Robert Polidori was born in Montreal in 1951 and today lives in Ojai, California. He received the World Press Photo Award in 1997, the Alfred Eisenstaedt Award for Magazine Photography in 1999 and 2000, and Communication Arts awards in 2007 and 2008. In 2006 Polidori's acclaimed photos of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina were exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His books with Steidl include Havana (2003), Zones of Exclusion-Pripyatand Chernobyl (2003), After the Flood(2006), Parcours Musologique Revisit(2009), Some Points in Between ... Up TillNow (2010) and Eye and I (2014).