Mapping Architectural Decay with Robert Polidori

We at AnOther aren’t alone in finding an oddly beguiling beauty in abandoned buildings – in fact, a whole sub-genre of architectural photography, that of 'Ruin Porn', has risen up in celebration of them. When it comes to the ineffable attraction of such decay, Canadian photographer Robert Polidori is something of a connoisseur. This month, a new exhibition entitled Ecophilia/Chronostasis at the Paul Kasmin Gallery, presents a collection of his photographs of what he terms “dendritic cities”, referring to the likes of Amman, Mumbai, and Rio de Janeiro. “He appropriates the term ‘dendritic’ from the branching extensions of a cell structure,” the gallery explains, “and uses it to describe the auto-constructed cities that have appeared as a result of industrialism in cities around the world.” The organic subtext of such a word is particularly apt in this example; abandonment seems to spread like a natural lichen across the warmly coloured walls of the buildings he shoots, leaving behind a trail of detritus and peeling paint in its wake. 

There’s a maplike quality to these photographs, too, both in the spidery lines on the walls themselves, puckering like countries’ borders, and in the strategies employed to document them; Polidori’s formal technique requires that he frame an image based on its subject, rather than on his own aesthetic ideas. Take 60 Feet Road, for example – a work he created in response to a stretch of land in Mumbai, India, which stitches together over 20 photographs to create a Hockney-esque panorama rather than fragment the view by choosing to capture only one aspect of it. This technical versatility is present across Polidori’s work, and draws a parallel with 19th-century cartographers. “Its execution came to demand labours more in line with mapping strategies than traditional photographic compositional framing.” Needless to say, the end result is quite captivating.

Robert Polidori: Ecophilia/Chronostasis runs until October 15, 2016 at Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York.