Author(s): Robert Polidori

Photography

"Transitional States" is Robert Polidori's attempt to visually portray aspects of historical revisionism as seen through various stages of the restoration of the Palace of Versailles. What does it really mean to restore a room? Is it about the precise duplication of something which is now showing the wear and tear of its age, to renew it and make it again as it once was? Or does it involve entirely redefining the rooms epidermis to a completely different state, a state that it may once have had in an earlier epoch? The curatorial decisions that control this process reflect a political will and esthetic tastes which have altered over the period of the restoration. Photographed over a period of 25 years, the transient and temporary situations which the labors of these restorations afford, present temporal paradoxes that engage layers of history and power.