Pompeii: Photographs and Fragments

Destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79, the ancient city of Pompeii has captured public imagination since it was first excavated in 1748. Pompeii: Photographs and Fragments highlights the changing representations of Pompeii over time. The exhibition centers on two projects by the artists William Wylie and An-My Lê, made while they were both Happy and Bob Doran Artists in Residence in Praiano, Italy, in 2012 and 2016, respectively. 

Wylie’s large-scale photographs of Pompeii reanimate the ancient city, showing the ongoing cycles of deterioration and preservation that mark it as a living landscape. An-My Lê’s hand-bound artist’s book features views of the Bay of Naples and images of the reliefs, frescoes, paintings, and sculptures that make up the hidden erotica collection of Pompeii, or “Secret Cabinet,” held in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli. 

Fragments of ancient Roman wall paintings and a range of domestic objects from the period and region are also on view, along with a selection of 18th-century etchings and 19th-century photographs, enriching our understanding of this 1st-century Roman town.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.

Image: William Wylie, Basilica (VIII.I), 2013. Pigmented inkjet print.  Yale University Art Gallery, Janet and Simeon Braguin Fund. ©William Wylie


Handsomely illustrated and grand in scale, Pompeii Archive features images by American photographer William Wylie (b. 1957) taken over the course of five years. The photographs reanimate the ancient city of Pompeii, showing the ongoing cycles of deterioration and preservation that mark it as a living landscape. Wylie captures Pompeii’s former grandeur, including its terracotta reliefs and wall paintings, while also drawing attention to the signs of an active excavation site, from plaster casts in glass cases to ceramic fragments in storage facilities. His elegant compositions and command of light and shadow highlight how natural phenomena, pollution, and human intervention are continually reshaping the city. People, however, are notably absent in the photographs. Wylie beautifully documents Pompeii’s present by engaging with the tenuous relationship that the archaeological site maintains with the past.

Select Pompeii Archive to learn more or to place this book in your Amazon shopping cart.