Robert Polidori: The Beauty of Neutral Lighting in Dark Spaces

Polidori’s work is well-established to have economic overtones, highlighting the decrepit, neglected, paint-peeled corners of the world, but not in the way it is conventionally done.

I browsed multiple significant photographers that capture place and identity as a subject matter, but Polidori’s images stopped me in my tracks and bore right into my soul because they remind me of home.

I spent a significant chunk of my childhood living in and around places that look like this growing up in one of the poorer parts of Wilmington, Delaware.

The clutter, the incompleteness of dingy half-painted walls, and the making of a home out of less than ideal structures feel like a warm and melancholic blanket to me.

The places where you lived, how you lived in them, stay long after you leave.

The crumbled bricks, the water-stained plaster, the broken syringes, and bird bones at the edge of the playground.

The back lots full of snakes and stray cats between the condominiums Brandywine Creek are all part of me as much as the tranquil suburbias of Elsmere and Havre De Grace.

We carry where we’ve been with us, it’s all so temporary.

Whether we recognize it or not, whether we enjoyed it or not, humans are sticky, we carry little bits and pieces of where we’ve been, everything stays, but it keeps moving, mingling with new and old experiences.

What I find incredibly moving and charming about Polidori’s images of places stricken by urban poverty and decay, is that it’s not “poverty porn”.

They are literal, they allow the places to speak for themselves.

The fact that there no people, and that these places are not cast in dark and morose angles and lighting gives their existence more depth.

“Look at how miserable it is to be poor” while well-meant and serving a purpose, has been done many times before, and repeated exposure can create apathy.

Neglected, damaged places have their own grace and dignity to them, they deserve respect, just as the people who live in those places deserve dignity and respect, and it seems to me that Polidori understands that.

These images of neglect and decay are not cast in a positive light either, there is no omission of destruction or pain, nor is there a subtle, insidious implication “things will get better if you just work harder”.

Polidori’s images do not exploit or minimize the pain of its subjects, without stripping the image of its spirit or character.

They are brutally, beautifully neutral, they are here to say “This is a place. People lived here.” nothing more, and nothing less.

They are more compelling, more home to me than any pleading call to charity or blatant omission of poverty an image could provide.

Sources:

Artnet. (n.d.). Robert Polidori. Robert Polidori Biography – Robert Polidori on artnet. http://www.artnet.com/artists/robert-polidori/biography.

Firestone, E. (2017, January 31). Museum in the news. https://artmuseum.princeton.edu/about/press-room/press-release/nationhood-place-and-identity-examined-through-exhibition-global.

Robert Palidori. (n.d.). ROBERT POLIDORI. http://www.robertpolidori.com/.