Robert Polidori Captures the Beauty Behind the Construction for Dior’s New Museum
Robert Polidori is a world-renowned photographer, who is capturing the essence of the environments that humans live in. He plays with backgrounds and time in his photographs by capturing the past and the present all at the same time and revealing what has happened in a single location. When he was living overseas in Paris in the 1980s, he was fascinated by the construction of Versailles and decided to start photographing it. This led him to his passion today, capturing the human environment. One of his biggest projects was documenting Hurricane Katrina in 2005, where he captured the true destruction and heartbreak that was caused in New Orleans.
Photo: Robert Polidori via Women’s Wear Daily
While Polidori is always photographing the destruction of an environment and the effects that it has had on an area, he took a different route with construction and rebuilding for his newest project. Christian Dior’s front-runner store in Paris, France used to hold a boutique, classes, and a workshop specifically for haute couture garments, and a salon. All of this is being stripped down to the skeleton of the building, a blank canvas for Polidori.
Although it was torn down, it will still remain a property of Christian Dior and it will house a boutique, a restaurant with a café, and an exclusive suite. The boutique that now lives in the new space is the biggest Dior store in the world, sitting at about 108, 000 square feet (Nahem 2022). But, the most exciting part about this rebuild is the museum that will sit next to Christian Dior’s original office before he passed in the 1950s. This new flagship opened in the spring of 2022 and is truly the definition of luxury with grandiose decor and beautiful works of art canvasing the walls.
Photo: Robert Polidori via Women’s Wear Daily
Since Polidori enjoys messing with the time in his photos, he was granted exclusive access to the building before, during, and after the construction to bring out the beauty in rebuilding. The photos reveal that tearing the building down and starting new is not totally a bad thing, Dior might have lost some history and memories with what used to live there, but they are also taking a step forward and creating a new space for the public to enjoy too.
Photo: Robert Polidori via Women’s Wear Daily
Having a museum dedicated to Dior is a very fascinating experience for the public because not only can they shop and look at the products, but they can go through the museum and see history. Working with a fashion brand is not common for Polidori due to his interest in environments instead of fashion. However, with Dior, there is a certain feeling within the museum space that he enjoys photographing, which drew him to this project.
Photo: Robert Polidori via Women’s Wear Daily
This has been in the works for two years due to the major undertaking the former Parisian headquarters was taking on. The photos that came from this display the different time periods of Dior, the past, present, and future of Dior, and this specific flagship. Many of his photographs expose the bare walls and structure of the building, and some include a mannequin with Dior haute couture pieces dating all the way back to 1947.
Polidori has the skills to uncover the beauty behind the destruction of a past building as it morphs into something new that will move Dior further into the future.