Candida Höfer: Memory: State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

In 2014, during St Petersburg’s White Nights, the renowned German photographer Candida Höfer was invited by the State Hermitage Museum to visit the city. She spent ten days photographing several of the city’s landmarks: the Yusupov Palace, the National Library, the Mariinsky Theatre, Pavlovsk Palace, the Catherine Palace, and the Hermitage itself. The 25 mesmerising works that make up this book are the latest in a series of iconic interiors that Höfer has photographed throughout the world over several decades, including the Louvre and Uffizi Gallery, the Royal Portuguese Library in Rio de Janeiro, La Scala in Milan, and the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza. They are characterised by the photographer’s interest in communicating cultural memory, and are all linked by the total absence of people. Entitled Memory, the book develops the theme of a tripartite relationship between the person, the space and the past.