A Retrospective in the Heart of New York
This September, as the buzz of New York Fashion Week unfurls its familiar glamour, Pace Gallery opens its doors to an exhibition that feels like stepping into a dream. Paolo Roversi, the Italian-born photographer whose images have long defined the soul of fashion, returns to New York with a focused retrospective spanning from the early 1990s to the present. Running through October 25 at Pace’s West 25th Street space, the show revisits Roversi’s collaborations with models, designers, and fellow artists—each portrait a quiet theater of intimacy.
Every portrait is a meeting, an exchange, a mutual intimate confession.
– Roversi has said.
Standing before his images, one feels this truth palpably: the sitter does not pose but emerges, like a figure slowly revealed in the dusk.
The Language of Shadows and Light
Roversi’s style—hazy, timeless, bathed in spectral light—has become one of the most recognizable signatures in fashion photography. Often shot with his beloved Deardorff 8×10 camera and Polaroid film, his images linger between painting and photograph, memory and apparition.
Where others celebrate the sharpness of reality, Roversi leans into its softness. The diffused glow, the tender blur, the sense that the image itself is dreaming—these qualities elevate his work beyond fashion, into the realm of fine art.
Paolo’s photography is timeless… located both at the heart of fashion and at the edge.
– Sylvie Lécallier, curator of his 2024 exhibition at the Palais Galliera in Paris, captured it well.
From Ravenna to Paris: A Journey in Vision
Born in Ravenna in 1947, Roversi first encountered photography on a family trip to Spain in 1964. A makeshift basement darkroom soon followed. By 1970, he was working as a photojournalist for the Associated Press. But fate—and the invitation of ELLE art director Peter Knapp—drew him to Paris in 1973, where fashion became both his medium and muse.
After assisting British photographer Lawrence Sackmann, Roversi began shooting independently. A Dior beauty campaign in 1980 cemented his reputation, leading to collaborations with the likes of Yves Saint Laurent, Valentino, and Comme des Garçons. By the mid-1980s, his photographs were appearing regularly in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, marking him as one of the great visionaries of the field.
Intimate Collaborations
What distinguishes Roversi is not merely technical mastery but the relationships he cultivates. Models like Guinevere van Seenus, who has worked with him for nearly three decades, describe his studio as a sanctuary.
Having your portrait taken is more than just looking at the camera. Paolo creates the space for the person to emerge.
– She says.
This ethos extends beyond fashion. His recent collaboration with textile artist Sheila Hicks is a testament to trust and openness. No prior discussions, no rigid concepts—just two artists allowing their practices to intertwine organically. Several of these works will also appear in the Pace show, reminding us that art often blooms in the space between disciplines.
Legacy of a Dreamer
Roversi’s work resides in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and the National Portrait Gallery in London. His books—Studio Luce, Nudi, Des Oiseaux, among others—offer further chapters in a career defined by devotion to the alchemy of light.
The Pace exhibition is less a survey than a meditation: an invitation to linger in the half-light where Roversi’s subjects live, poised between fashion and eternity. His portraits are not about clothing alone, nor even beauty, but about presence—the trembling miracle of a human being appearing before the lens.
And in that moment of emergence, Paolo Roversi shows us what fashion photography can be: not ephemera, not surface, but a whisper from the timeless.