In "Havana", Robert Polidori captures the extravagant decrepitude that contemporary Havana has become.
Publisher word
Robert Polidori, often considered an architectural photographer, is in fact a photographer of habitat. On the surface his subjects are buildings, but at the core his lens is focused on the remnants and traces of living he finds scattered in hallways, left in back rooms and worn on facades. His spectacular color photographs are presented here in an appropriately oversized volume that capture both their monu-mentality and their attention to detail. Havana is a particularly rich setting for Polidori's inquiries.The curves and columns that line the streets refer to past eras and speak of the political, social, and eco-nomic forces that have driven the city to its present condition. Through his rigorous and sensitive examination facilitated by a sense of color and compo-sition that makes his photographs feel like vivid memories-Polidori delicately peels away the pati-na of daily living and reveals the juxtapositions that create a city's identity. His photographs define the idea of faded grandeur. In this city the peddler lives where the countess once resided; children dance and tumble where merchants conducted their business. Each photograph is a discovery and a fragment of the city's biography. Fascinated by the impact of weather and time on the structure and function of buildings, Polidori traveled to Havana in 1997, where he focused his lens on the fading grandeur of the edifices constructed during the 1920s and '30s by the Cuban haute bourgeoisie. According to Polidori, in Havana most of the damage to the buildings he photographed was caused by water.
The grandiloquent decay, like an ever swelling musty velvet cape, gathers crumbling stone to unweeded garden to limpid sky to people. There is no future in this past, perhaps the most melancholy conjecture of all. It seems to me most photographs are lit by the late afternoon sun. The beauty makes one cry, we see our lives in the peeling paint and broken balustrades, the broken window frames, cracked marble, the rusted iron gates juxtaposed to broken down rococo splendor or dismembered bourgeois grandeur, trying to make do but never quite.
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. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker, Geo and Architectural Digest Germany. Polidori has received numerous honors, including a World Press Award for his coverage of the Getty Museum and two Alfred Eisenstaedt Awards for his work in Havana and Brasilia. Elizabeth Culbert is a New York-based art historian. Eduardo Luis Rodriguez is an architect and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Arquitectura Cuba
here in an appropriately oversized volume that capture both their monu-mentality and their attention to detail. Havana is a particularly rich setting for Polidori's inquiries.The curves and columns that line the streets refer to past eras and speak of the political, social, and eco-nomic forces that have driven the city to its present condition. Through his rigorous and sensitive examination facilitated by a sense of color and compo-sition that makes his photographs feel like vivid memories-Polidori delicately peels away the pati-na of daily living and reveals the juxtapositions that create a city's identity. His photographs define the idea of faded grandeur. In this city the peddler lives where the countess once resided; children dance and tumble where merchants conducted their business. Each photograph is a discovery and a fragment of the city's biography.
The grandiloquent decay, like an ever swelling musty velvet cape, gathers crumbling stone to unweeded garden to limpid sky to people. There is no future in this past, perhaps the most melancholy conjecture of all. It seems to me most photographs are lit by the late afternoon sun. The beauty makes one cry, we see our lives in the peeling paint and broken balustrades, the broken window frames, cracked marble, the rusted iron gates juxtaposed to broken down rococo splendor or dismembered bourgeois grandeur, trying to make do but never quite. 
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. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker, Geo and Architectural Digest Germany. Polidori has received numerous honors, including a World Press Award for his coverage of the Getty Museum and two Alfred Eisenstaedt Awards for his work in Havana and Brasilia. Elizabeth Culbert is a New York-based art historian. Eduardo Luis Rodriguez is an architect and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Arquitectura Cuba 
