Background
Luigi Ghirri was born on January 5, 1943, in Scandiano, Emilia-Romagna, Italy.
Luigi Ghirri was born on January 5, 1943, in Scandiano, Emilia-Romagna, Italy.
Luigi Ghirri was raised in the Italian province of Emilia-Romagna which postwar economic and cultural environment had an important impact on his formation as an artist.
Although trained as a landscape surveyor, he also discovered the world through the art of well-known movie directors, including Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Cesare Zavattini. Music and reading were his passions as well. Ghirri had a keen interest in Italian Renaissance, art history, any kind of objects and pictures that surrounded him.
Luigi Ghirri devoted the first ten years of his career to the service of a landscape surveyor before becoming a photographer in the 1970s. The scrupulous measurement of the space and angles to ascertain the borders of property came through the cartographic precision of all his further images.
In the 1960s, Ghirri left his native Scandiano and moved to Modena where he got involved in the local community of contemporary artists and photographers. The art of Eugène Atget, William Eggleston, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, August Sander as well as the picture of the Earth received from the Apollo 11 spacecraft pushed him to think about own photographic project. The first pictures of ordinary people and places that Ghirri observed in Modena were gathered by the author under the title ‘Fotografie del periodo iniziale’ (Photographs of the initial period) and later served as a base for many subsequent series. Another collection of his early works, so-called ready-mades where he viewed a variety of found objects as pieces of art was named Paesaggi di cartone (Cardboard landscapes).
The other major series of the 1970s inspired by these early experiments included Atlante (Atlas), Kodachrome, and Colazione sull’erba (Luncheon on the grass) in which the artist discovered the relationship between nature and artificial things using the example of the contrast between condominium gardens and single-family row houses. The first solo show of Ghirri, Fotografie 1970-71 was held in the hall of the Canalgrande Hotel-Sette Arti Club circle in 1972.
Within a couple of years, Ghirri’s unconventional perception of reality captured the attention of art critics who featured the photographer in several reviews, including the annual photography ‘Discoveries’ list of Time-Life, in 1975. That same year, Ghirri’s images were presented at the Photography as Art, Art as Photography group exhibition in Kassel followed by a number of solo and group shows in the United States, France, Italy, and the Netherlands. As to the remarkable works of the period, one of the important projects of the artist was his great Infinito (Infinity) consisted of the 365 pictures of the sky taken day by day and arranged into a big collage in a haphazard way.
Luigi Ghirri pursued the landscape theme the following years with such series as ‘Vedute’ (Views) and ‘Italia ailati’ (“ailati” stands for “Italia” spelled in reverse) that demonstrated little known sites of the country. The relocation to the historic center of Modena in 1976 inspired Ghirri on Identikit project, the quintessence of the artist’s identity shown through the images of his house interior, and Still-Life series, depicting the atmosphere of the antique market not far from his home.
A year after relocation to a new dwelling, the photographer, along with his wife and Giovanni Chiaramonte, founded a publishing house Punto e Virgola meant to issue works that reflect the photographic culture of Italy. It was exactly the house that published the debut book by Ghirri, Kodachrome, in 1978. The narrative volume assembled the artist’s works of the first eight years of his photographic career with his critical texts. The shows dedicated to the Kodachrome project were held in various corners of Italy and in France as well. That same year, Luigi Ghirri took part in the Venice Biennale group show L’immagine provocata.
The important retrospective of Ghirri's works, Vera Fotografia, that boosted his awareness, was organized in 1979. The audience had a possibility to discover about seven hundred of his photographs arranged into fourteen narrative successions. The monographic projects initiated by Kodachrome were followed by such works as Diaframma 11, 1/125, luce natural series. It was during that period when Luigi Ghirri tried his hand as an art curator of exhibitions and editorial projects for the first time.
The new decade was marked by the begging of the novel period in Ghirri’s art reflecting his idea about photography as the “language” that can reveal the symbolic meaning of places. The concept found expression in Topographie-Iconographie (Topography-Iconography) series. The artist continued to discover the lines between art and photography this time putting a premium on the emotional component of the image. Ghirri turned his attention to the architecture, both the modern and traditional, in Introduzione (Introduction) series. At the same time, Ghirri obtained first public commissions that enlarged the interests of his artistic investigations. There were the orders of The Young and Rubicam Agency in Milan for the promotional campaign of the local tourism, and of Polaroid International where he worked from 1980 to 1981.
On his exploration of the relationships between art and photography, Ghirri arrived at the concept of “genius loci,” or “spirit of place” and the meaning of accommodation. The 1983 commission from Lotus International magazine to take photos of Aldo Rossi’s San Cataldo cemetery in Modena later inspired the artist on the Paesaggio Italiano series.
In the middle of the 1980s, Luigi Ghirri got involved in academics first undertaking the course on the history and technique of photography at the University of Parma in 1984. The same year, he read a lecture at the Sorbonne in Paris and served as a visiting professor at the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie in Arles holding a workshop ‘À la recherche de l'original perdu’ (In search of the lost original).
Occupied with multiple curational projects and teaching activity, the artist didn’t abandon his photo interpretations of architecture. Ghirri came back to the topics in the series he took in the palace and gardens of Versailles on the commission of the French Ministry of Culture. One of the key compositional elements of the images was light. Another project focused on architecture and landscapes was initiated by Ghirri himself and realized within his homeland. ‘Esplorazioni sulla via Emilia’ (Explorations on the Via Emilia, 1983-86) featured the changes of the ancient Via Emilia caused by urbanization and industrialization.
In addition, Ghirri traveled around the country and created a series of his vision of the museums. He also visited Ljubljana where he photographed Jože Plečnik’s architectural works for a 1990 monograph on him. In 1986, the photographer made his first visit to the United States that led to a great number of new pictures. Three years later, Luigi Ghirri led a course on photography at the Università del Progetto in Reggio Emilia.
The last pivotal projects of Ghirri in the genre of “interior landscape” became the series of photos he made in the studios of Giorgio Morandi and Aldo Rossi a year before his death. The book on Giorgio Morandi’s interiors Ghirri started to work on remained unfinished.
Modena
Giardini di Reggio Emilia
Modena 1973
Modena 1973
Capri
Naples
Roma, 1979
Bressanone, 1979
Ile Rousse
Quimper
Modena (Topographie-Iconographie Series)
Modena 1978
Modena (Italia ailati Series)
Bretagna
Luzern 1971
Nogara
Ferrara
Ostiglia (Il profilo delle nuvole Series)
Modena (Diaframma 11 Series)
Atelier Morandi, Bologna vie Fondazze, 1989-90
Lucerna (Kodachrome Series)
L'Alpe di Siusi, Ortisei
Ventimiglia, Villa Hanbury
Riviera Romagnola (Paesaggio Italiano Series)
Untitled
Versailles
New York, Gioielleria Bulgari
Modena, 1973
Modena, 1973
Bonn 1973
Modena, 1973
Modena, 1973
Argine Agosta, Comacchio, 1989
Versailles 1985
Grizzana, Bologna 1989-90
Ille Rousse
Modena 1973
Infinito
Quotations:
"I wanted to give the person an infinite number of identities, from photographer to subject, from being looked at to being an onlooker."
"I get the impression that behind what I see there is another landscape, one which is the true landscape, but I can’t say what it is, nor can I imagine it."
"I consider reality complex and supple and not reducible."
"The places and objects that I have photographed are truly ‘zones of memory,’ localities that demonstrate... that reality is transformed into a grand story."
"The significance lies in putting down information to make distinctions and connections, to emphasize relationships, to disassemble mechanisms."
"I am interested in ephemeral architecture, in the provincial world, in objects generally regarded as bad taste, as kitsch, but which have never been that for me, in objects charged with desires, dreams, collective memories [...], windows, mirrors, stars, palm trees, atlases, globes, books, museums and human beings seen through images."
"My work as a surveyor taught me many things about space, the landscape, the stone-by-stone construction of a space, beginning with a plan. The plan is a given that allows you to structure the work of an individual. It is necessary to have a plan, both for the construction of a house and, above all, for the creation of a work of art... It is only within this that the risk and freedom of the gesture is allowed."
"Each piece requires the patient work of fitting it in. Interlocking it with other pieces, measuring it and contrasting it."
"I photograph in color because the real world is not in black and white."
"Light is the real substance that gives form to my images.... For me, light is the true ‘genius loci.’... Through my work I have discovered that there exists... a particular moment when, through light, even something that is apparently invisible ends up being revealed on the surface of the world."
"Even I can’t say which enlightened me more, Dylan’s musical and poetic landscapes, Oldenburg’s sculptures-architectures, Robert Frank’s or Friedlander’s visions, Evans’s ethical rigor, Breughel’s cosmogonies, Fellini’s fantasies, the Alinari brothers’ views, Atget’s silences, the Flemish artists’ precision, Piero della Francesca’s purity, or Van Gogh’s colors."
Luigi Ghirri was married to Paola Borgonzoni. The family produced a daughter named Adele. Ghirri had also a daughter Ilaria who was born in 1970.