Afternoon at Palazzo Altemps: 2022

For over three decades Simon Watson has exhibited both his photographs and paintings in Europe and the U.S. His work is included in museums, public and private collections. Watson has been a regular contributor to The New York Times T Magazine, Vogue, W Magazine, Vanity Fair and The World of Interiors. His most recent books were, The Lives of Others (Rizzoli, 2020) and Portrait of a House (Dürer Editions, 2021).

In his next book Afternoon at Palazzo Altemps, Watson explores the sublime fifteenth-century palazzo in Rome. The building, which houses significant collections from Antiquity, is very familiar to Watson from his days living in Rome. During the course of an afternoon in June 2021, he returned to the palazzo and started the process of making photographs, something he had done in the palazzo many times before. Watson says, “even though I only spent three or four hours there that afternoon, and that all the photographs printed in this monograph were taken during that time; this work is a culmination of the many visits and observations that I made over the long stretch of time. It wasn’t my intention to make a book, but back in my studio the characters willed their way from my archive and onto the pages of this volume”.