After nearly 30 years documenting the restoration work at Marie Antoinette's 17th-century hamlet, The Palace of Versailles, acclaimed photographer Robert Polidori says he knows more about today’s society than about the kings and queens who once occupied the palatial home.
"When you choose to restore a certain room as it was in a certain period, the period you choose is based on your contemporary worldview," Polidori told Yatzer.com of his photo project ''Versailles,'' which went on display at New York's Mary Boone Gallery last month. "What we are looking at in these museum restorations is the society’s superego, what a society thinks of itself, and how it thinks it should be seen by itself. This is what individuals do to a room… It’s the exteriorisation of the soul life or of personal values," he says.
According to Yatzer, Polidori began his fascination with Versailles after winning an exclusive contract to document the restoration of the seventeenth-century palace in the mid-1980’s. Since then, he's captured Versailles' centuries of wear and tear and the massive undertaking of restoring the space.
In 2009, Polidori published several hundred photographs from his project in a three-volume book called, Parcours Muséologique Revisité. Take a look at some of his images below or at the Mary Boone Gallery through October 26.
Robert Polidori Documents Over 20 Years Of Restorations At The Palace of Versailles
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