PAOLO ROVERSI EXHIBITION

From March 16th to July 14th, 2024. 10 avenue Pierre Ier de Serbie (16th), 01 56 52 86 00 M° Iéna, Alma-marceau or Pont de l'alma www.palaisgalliera.paris.fr

Paris has never seen anything like it. The French capital's fashion museum, the Palais Galliera, is proud to present an exceptional event dedicated to the famous Italian fashion photographer and portraitist Paolo Roversi, from 16th March to 14th July. It's an opportunity for the public to rediscover the work of an artist much admired among great designers, and for a major Parisian museum to pay tribute to him.

Roversi is said to have an outstanding eye for the next top models. As a major photographer working at fashion's top echelons, his photos have featured in leading magazines such as Vogue, Elle, Egoïste, Luncheon and Marie Claire since the 1980s, as well as at the prestigious Pace/macgill gallery in New York. He has photographed models for major fashion designers such as Dior, Yohji Yamamoto, Chanel, Romeo Gigli and Rei Kawakubo over the last five decades. His elegant style brings out his models' intense presence in portraitlike pictures often shot in simple black and white. Naomi Campbell, Isabella Rossellini, Kate Moss, Natalia Vodianova, Laetitia Casta and Cate Blanchett have all posed for him and become immortal fashion icons whose expressions possess a certain intensity. Actresses, singers and even Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales, have all had the privilege of sitting for him.

The Polaroid format, which grew up around the same time as he did, has long been the Italian photographic master's trademark and tool of choice, but is has evolved with the new digital era, of course. This exhibition of almost 140 photographs by the legendary fashion photographer (some being shown for the first time) presents his glittering professional and artistic career and captivating archives in a gallery that recreates one of the artist's imagined studios. On the walls of the Palais Galliera, these photos are presented in a different way from how they appear in major fashion magazines. They take on even more magnified proportions and are erected as veritable works of art, revealing 50 years of passion for women, fashion and creating images from a man who, as a child, dreamed of becoming an orchestral conductor. In Paris' fashion museum, the women in Paolo Roversi's photos look at us with their intense eyes - but are in fact staring fiercely at his lens.