Robert Polidori
[Photographer, b. 1951, Montréal, Canada, lives in New York.]
Where you point the camera is the question and the picture you get is the answer to decipher.
I would say that the emblematic photographic image is a picture from inside a room looking out. I think this defines photography. It’s the metaphor for the notion of first sight. What one saw first.
My belief is that you should take stills of what doesn’t seem to move, and take movies or videos of [what] does.
I’m not a believer in the future. The most interesting things are always behind us. I look at everything as archaeology.
Doing editorial work is like being on the road with a band. You don’t do your best shit, but you raise the level of your mediocrity and it makes you ready to do your best work when the opportunity comes along. (Quoted by Alec Soth)
I’ve always been accused by my detractors of some sort of moral failure, cowardice, or even lack of humanity by not portraying the human form. I respond that I do better by portraying traces of character and intentions? of human volition that no mug or body shot can ever exude.
I walked all around it [the Guggenheim Bilbao] and couldn’t find one clear, clean shot. To make things worse, the weather was lousy. Nothing about this rang “commercial money shot.” In a situation like this there’s only one thing to do: forget about pleasing editors, please yourself.