{"id":485548,"date":"2026-05-15T06:17:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T06:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/485548\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T06:17:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T06:17:11","slug":"fashion-photographer-paolo-roversi-gets-gallery-space-in-ravenna","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/485548\/","title":{"rendered":"Fashion Photographer Paolo Roversi Gets Gallery Space in Ravenna"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tMILAN <\/strong>\u2014 Celebrated across continents with major retrospectives and solo shows <\/a>and based in Paris since 1973, Italian photographer Paolo Roversi is finally headed back home \u2014 metaphorically, with the unveiling of a permanent gallery in his hometown of Ravenna.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s so great to be back after 50 years of [self] \u2018exile,\u2019 especially with such an important recognition,\u201d Roversi told WWD with a chuckle in an interview this week.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cRavenna is my home. Although I\u2019ve been living in Paris for over 50 years, I feel I belong to this city, where I\u2019ve spent my entire childhood and teenage years and that is so profoundly rooted in me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tRoversi\u2019s elegiac style was inspired by the Byzantine architecture and cultural backdrop of his hometown as well as the work of August Sander, Robert Frank and Diane Arbus.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cRavenna has always held a place in my heart and its identity trickled down into my work. It was never an intentional choice, but rather a subconscious process, informed by the memories and reminiscences of that place,\u201d Roversi said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tUsing large-format Polaroid film and primarily shooting in his Paris studio, Roversi\u2019s dream-like and imaginative compositions have been able to transcend time.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter a family trip in 1964, Roversi built a darkroom in his basement and began his career a few years later with the Associated Press. By 1973, he had moved to Paris, where he assisted the British photographer Lawrence Sackmann. Jobs for Elle, Depeche Mode and Dior followed, as did ad campaigns for Cerruti, Comme des Gar\u00e7ons, Yves Saint Laurent, Valentino and more.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Paolo Roversi Gallery \u2014 officially opening Wednesday <\/strong>at the Art Museum of the City of Ravenna, known as Mar \u2014 is the result of a collaboration among the cultural institution, the Municipality of Ravenna and its Department of Culture. It builds on an exhibit hosted by the museum between 2020 and 2021 titled \u201cPaolo Roversi \u2013 Studio Luce.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Sanjia,<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tSanjia, Paris 2024 by Paolo Roversi<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Mar<\/p>\n

\n\tLocated on the top floor of the museum, the gallery was curated by Chiara Bardelli Nonino who, Roversi said, realized how much the city reflects the photographer\u2019s work. \u201cI resemble Ravenna, rather than the city resembling me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe space was designed by longtime Roversi collaborator Ania Martchenko, who has previously helped the maestro, as he is known, for the set design of the retrospective \u201cPaolo Roversi,\u201d held in 2024 at the Palais Galliera in Paris.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShe excels at translating my work and my world into space,\u201d Roversi said.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Gallery at the Mar is organized around three rooms, preceded by a hallway where portraits of Kate Moss<\/a>, Stella Tennant and Natalia Vodianova are hung on the walls.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe first room, the Studio, is a recreation of the photographer\u2019s famous atelier on Rue Paul Fort in Paris, known as Studio Luce, where fashion pictures, still-life imagery, portraits coexist as a kaleidoscopic trip inside Roversi\u2019s oeuvre and intimate workspace. The exhibit also displays shots of his Parisian studio and actual equipment, including the Deardorff camera.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve always worked in domestic spaces. First at home and then at studios. They looked and felt like home, imbued with familiarity and conviviality, where lunch is sacred, where friendships blossoms and where I feel at ease and comfortable,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Paolo<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tPaolo Roversi<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Mar<\/p>\n

\n\tThat space opens on two adjoining rooms, the Archive, with cardboard walls and a long table, and the Muses\u2019 room, where portraits of Naomi Campbell, actress Golshifteh Farahani, Rihanna and her daughter Stella, among other A-listers, are set against textile-covered walls.<\/p>\n

\n\tBardelli Nonino avoided arranging pictures in chronological order and instead recreated \u201ca walk through my career, picking the most interesting works,\u201d Roversi said. \u201cShe didn\u2019t want too many celebrities or too obvious pictures. The exhibit is more about reviving my [forgotten] shots,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe selection includes the \u201clight painting\u201d series realized by Roversi for Comme des Gar\u00e7ons in 1996, starring Audrey Marnay; the \u201cwhite nudes\u201d featuring Shalom Harlow, Amber Valletta, Kirsten Owen and Devon Aoki; four pictures featuring vintage Christian Dior dresses created by the founder himself, and\u00a0a shot of Italian actress Isabella Rossellini taken at the Chelsea Hotel in 1992, among others.<\/p>\n

\n\tThese and many other pictures tell the story of exceptional encounters, Roversi said.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMany personalities have helped enrich my photographic vocabulary, from Azzedine Alaia to Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto, to name just a few. All of them taught me something,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cArchives are alive. Every time I go back to old pictures and open a box full of them, I always discover something new, some that I had never really considered and others that I had forgotten,\u201d Roversi said. \u201cIt\u2019s a treasure trove, which I safeguard. It\u2019s like a garden continuously blossoming with new flowers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe photographer has been praised for the consistency of his work across a 50-year-plus career where the notion and depiction of elegance and femininity has changed significantly, sometimes through Roversi\u2019s own lens, too, for example when helping the careers of top models like Moss and Tennant take off with his iconic pictures.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve always kept myself distance from fashion\u2019s \u2018tourbillon\u2019 [whirlwind] where everything is written anew every three or six months. I\u2019ve just watched the river flow before me, resisting the urge to embrace the \u2018derni\u00e8re vague\u2019 [last trend],\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe digital age\u2019s speed and need to be quick, nimble and effective immediately has stripped the mystique and spirituality off of photography<\/a>. For over 30 years I\u2019ve worked with Polaroids and 20\u00d725 cameras, which require a slower approach and a lot of meditation,\u201d Roversi said. \u201cThis would at times lead me to \u2018wrong images,\u2019 with mistakes and imperfections but I\u2019ve never wanted all the pictures to be perfectly in focus in the first place,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve rather embraced setbacks and accidents as an opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Kirsten<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tKirsten Paris, 1990 by Paolo Roversi<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Mar<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen the Paolo Roversi Gallery opens next week, it will give the maestro an opportunity to take pride in his achievements \u2014 something he\u2019s often chosen to downplay.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen I visited the gallery, I thought about myself as a kid in Ravenna who left for Paris to follow his dream of photography<\/a>. My biggest accomplishment is that I was able to express myself and convey my feelings,\u201d he said. \u201cI hope that anyone staring at my pictures will feel the same emotions I felt while shooting them. I want people to fall in love.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen I see someone looking at my photographs getting emotions, I get emotional too,\u201d he said. \u201cIt means I\u2019ve really struck a chord.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MILAN \u2014 Celebrated across continents with major retrospectives and solo shows and based in Paris since 1973, Italian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":485549,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[267],"tags":[365,362,363,364,366,18,117,2037,19,17,60441,432],"class_list":{"0":"post-485548","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-eire","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-exhibition","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-kate-moss","19":"tag-photography"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116577137351028735","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/485549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}