Paolo Roversi's dreamlike fashion photography on show

A new exhibition dedicated to the Italian fashion photographer Paolo Roversi is being showcased by the Guardian in a picture gallery that celebrates his distinctive, dreamlike aesthetic. The feature, published this week, focuses on how Roversi's technical mastery transforms what might be considered flaws — blur, soft focus, the accidents of light — into the very substance of his images' beauty.

Roversi, whose decades-long career has made him one of the most recognisable names in fashion photography, is presented by the Guardian as a practitioner of what it calls 'magic from the shadows'. The gallery format, rather than a conventional review, allows the work itself to carry the argument: each image is offered as evidence of a method that prizes atmosphere over sharpness, and suggestion over precision.

The Guardian's presentation of Roversi's work arrives at a moment when the fashion photography establishment is increasingly looking back at its own canon, reassessing the artists who defined the medium's golden era in the late twentieth century. Roversi, an Italian who has long worked between Paris and his home country, belongs to that generation of image-makers who blurred the line between commercial fashion work and fine art.

His approach — often shooting with large-format cameras, using long exposures and natural light, and embracing the imperfections that result — stands in deliberate contrast to the hyper-polished digital aesthetic that dominates much contemporary fashion imagery. The Guardian's gallery highlights how this method produces portraits that feel intimate and otherworldly at once, with subjects emerging from shadow rather than being presented in crisp, frontal clarity.

For the Italian cultural economy, Roversi's enduring international reputation is a reminder of the country's continued influence in the visual arts beyond the traditional domains of painting and sculpture. Fashion photography, as practiced by Italians like Roversi, has long been a significant export of the nation's creative industries, its practitioners shaping how the world sees not only clothing but also the human form itself.

The gallery format also reflects a broader trend in arts journalism, where online platforms increasingly present visual work through the image-led structures that suit their readerships. By framing Roversi's exhibition through a curated selection of photographs, the Guardian offers its audience direct access to the work while situating it within a critical appreciation of his technique.

Roversi's career has intersected with the major houses of European fashion, and his images have appeared in the most influential style publications across several decades. His sustained relevance, as demonstrated by this new exhibition and its international coverage, suggests that the dreamlike, shadowed sensibility he helped pioneer continues to resonate with contemporary audiences and photographers alike.