Polidori became interested in still photography while editing film frame-by-frame. Inspired by Frances Yates' description in "The Art of Memory" of mnemonic systems requiring the memorization of empty rooms, he purchased a large-format camera in 1982 and photographed abandoned and apartments on New York's Lower East Side. In 1983 he moved to Paris and, interested in how empty spaces revealed history, began to document the restoration of Château de Versailles as a symbol of "society’s superego". In the late 1990s Polidori was engaged by "The New Yorker" to photograph Havana’s decaying architectural heritage and joined the magazine as a staff photographer in 1998. Images from his Cuban series were later published in "Havana" (2001) by Steidl Verlag. Also interested in inner-city habitats or "auto-constructed" growth, Polidori recorded the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, urban sprawl of Brasilia, construction boom in Dubai, and slums of Mumbai. In May 2001, he photographed the closed Chernobyl nuclear power plant and nearby ghost town of Pripyat, Ukraine, and these images were later published as "Zones of Exclusion – Pripyat and Chernobyl" (2003). In 2002 Polidori was commissioned to photograph Detroit's Michigan Central Station for "Metropolis (architecture magazine)". Described by editor Martin C. Pedersen as "a keen observer of the built world", the magazine later published his urban images as "Robert Polidori's Metropolis" (2005).