PAOLO ROVERSI

His professional career began in 1970 with photojournalism assignments for the Associated Press. Following an invitation to Paris from ELLE Magazine‘s legendary art director Peter Knapp in 1973, however, Roversi’s focus soon shifted to fashion. After a nine-month period assisting British photographer Lawrence Sackmann, whom he credits as an influential teacher, Roversi started shooting independently with small commissions for ELLE and Depeche Mode, gaining wider recognition with a Dior beauty campaign in 1980, and ultimately forging his reputation as one of the industry’s leading photographers by the mid-1980s.

Whether made with his trademark Deardorff 8 x 10 camera and Polaroid film or as carbon, chromogenic or pigment prints, Roversi’s photographs eloquently bridge the spheres of commercial photography and fine art. Imbued with classical visual language and a pictorial sensibility, his images occupy an ethereal realm of diffused lighting and dreamlike shadow that is simultaneously timeless and of this moment.

Roversi has led advertising campaigns for Cerruti, Comme des Garçons, Christian Dior, Yves Saint-Laurent, and Valentino, among others, and his work has been published in an international array of print media such as Arena, Harper’s Bazaar, I-D, Interview, Marie Claire, The New York Times Magazine, Italian and British Vogue_,_ and W.