That shruggingly modest nonchalance is typical of Roversi, who is of course a revered imagemaker\u2014yet it\u2019s certainly true that his star shines brightest outside of the US. \u201cAlong the Way\u201d reveals a body of work so quintessentially European that it could only have sprung from the land which gave us Nadar, Brassai, and Man Ray. (Okay, okay: I know Man Ray was American, but Paris was absolutely his aesthetic and spiritual home in much the same way Roversi, who hails from Ravenna, Italy, adopted the city as his, too.) Then again, perhaps the US wasn\u2019t exactly in his sights after the advice he was given by photographer Guy Bourdin, who once told Roversi: \u201cDon\u2019t go to work in New York\u2014it\u2019s the cemetery of photography.\u201d Roversi laughed. \u201cHis words,\u201d he continued, \u201cnot mine.\u201d<\/p>\n
The specifically American mindset of mining creativity for its commercial value was clearly not to Bourdin\u2019s liking, and maybe it wasn\u2019t too much to Roversi\u2019s either. (\u201cI\u2019ve mostly worked for European magazines,\u201d he said, a situation which is more a case of your loss, not mine.) Yet his work does demand greater attention. It doesn\u2019t trade in uncomplicated directness or immediacy: Its point is to capture you with its beauty, and then let that beauty haunt your mind. Roversi has also never been much interested in playing the star to further his career. \u201cIt\u2019s not really my character,\u201d he said, \u201cI\u2019m more of a private person. I like to work in my studio, in the corner.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paolo Roversi, Jerome, Studio Luce, Paris, December 5th, 2005. \u00a9 Paolo Roversi, courtesy Pace Gallery.<\/p>\n
\u00a9 Paolo Roversi, courtesy Pace Gallery<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"That shruggingly modest nonchalance is typical of Roversi, who is of course a revered imagemaker\u2014yet it\u2019s certainly true…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":415673,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3939],"tags":[4021,4020,4022,14357,77,33928,101435,31985,16,15,4715],"class_list":{"0":"post-415672","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-design","11":"tag-designers","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-models","14":"tag-splitscreenimagerightinset","15":"tag-storytypenews-trending","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-web"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115185467384399596","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}