Robert Polidori's Metropolis

"Robert Polidori is not only one of the world's preeminent architecture photographers, but he is also a master of urban portraiture. Polidori has made haunting studies of bombed-out buildings in Beirut, decaying New York tenements, the Palais de Versailles in dusty disarray, Brasilia's paean to spare 1950s modernism, and, most recently, the abandoned, contaminated cities of Chernobyl and Pripyat. Taken together, they add to his ongoing project: the interpretation of the interrupted urban landscape." This new book combines the eye of a celebrated photographer with the distinctive voice of an artist and adventurer. Each image is accompanied by a first-person account, based on interviews conducted by Martin C. Pedersen, executive editor of Metropolis magazine. Polidori tells behind-the-scenes stories about the making of his photographs and discusses his approach to shooting a variety of locations and structures, taking us to such places as Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro, Las Vegas, and Chandigarh.

Robert Polidori was born in Montreal in 1951 and lives in New York City. He has exhibited photographs in Paris, Brasilia, New York, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis. A staff photographer at The New Yorker, Polidori has received numerous honors, including a World Press Award for his coverage of the building of the Getty Museum and two Alfred Eisenstaedt Awards for his work in Havana and Brasilia. His recent books include Havana, a post-romantic excursion to the land of decayed grandeur, and Zones of Exclusion, a foray into the abondoned nuclear disasters of Pripyat and Chernobyl.