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Escapism
Photographs of Versailles by Robert Polidori.
Click image to view gallery
Architectural photographer Robert Polidori is a master at interpreting and representing unique interiors. He's turned his large format 8x10 camera on Chernobyl, Havana, and the wreckage left by Hurricane Katrina. His forthcoming Steidl monograph Transitional Spaces records two decades of recent revisionism at Versailles.
Versailles is a defining space of change and opulence; the palace has undergone countless transformations—four alone by Louis XIV in the second half of the seventeenth century. It has spent its recent history being renovated into a museum and tourist destination, after a sizable grant from John D. Rockefeller in 1924.
Polidori captures the inherent visual contradictions of such a project—a blue silk daybed is clothed in a thick protective plastic, the brilliant rococo hallway boasts a security camera, and visitors in red windbreakers dot the landscaped gardens (surely something Marie Antoinette never imagined).
Versailles will continue its metamorphoses, but these glittering images will remain still.
See more of Polidori's work at Edwynn Houk Gallery.
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Rachel is a photographer and writer who recently left her blogging post at Photoshelter's Shoot! The Blog. Previous to that she worked as a photo editor at Nerve.com, Rolling Stone online, and Radar, among others. Her work can be seen at rachelhulin.com.
I am really enjoying The Daily Beast, but your photo galleries are not up to the design and functional quality of the rest of the site. Small previous and next buttons on the wrong side, low resolution photos, and an in-general feeling of... indifference to photo presentation make for an uninteresting experience.
I also enjoy the site, but cannot view the photo galleries and have never been able to. The first picture shows up with the bottom half cut off by the bottom of my screen, and if I attempt to scroll it scrolls down the article not the gallery, so I cannot view the picture or view any next or pervious options below.
I love the photos, and I like the way it is all set up :), very left hand friendly :)
Thank you.
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