Luigi Ghirri was born in Fellegara di Scandiano, in the province of Reggio Emilia, on January 5, 1943: a historically delicate period during which Ghirri witnessed the world change in just a few years, from the post-war era to the economic boom and the subsequent cultural ferment of the 1960s.
Thus, he developed a sensitive personality attuned to change and eager for knowledge. Photography quickly became the means to look deeply into things, to understand their origins and transformations.
His photographs are strictly in color because reality – he argued – is not black and white.
Today, Ghirri is considered one of the most important Italian photographers of the late 20th century.
This year, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of his passing on February 14, 1992, many museums and cultural institutions have decided to pay tribute to him.
Discover more about Luigi Ghirri, his works and exhibitions, click here!
Seeing Beyond: Emilia Romagna Celebrates Ghirri
Reggio Emilia, along with Modena and Parma, organizes Seeing Beyond: a rich program of celebratory events and exhibitions honoring his career.
The Palazzo dei Musei in Reggio Emilia showcases “In Different Scale. Luigi Ghirri, Italy in Miniature and New Perspectives” until January 8, 2023.
Curated by Joan Fontcuberta along with Matteo Guidi and Ilaria Campioli, the exhibition focuses on the theme of the Archive, also based on the recent renovation of the exhibition spaces of the museum hosting the show, designed by architect Italo Rota.
Ghirri was struck by the park of Italy in Miniature, inaugurated in Viserba di Rimini on July 4, 1970. Thanks to the scale miniatures reproduced there of Italy’s artistic, architectural, and landscape masterpieces, the photographer rediscovered many of the conceptual and aesthetic issues he was working on at that time: illusion and trompe-l’oeil, the distance between reality and its representation, the emergence of an artificial nature, the consumption of touristified reality, the viewer’s gaze and their scopophilic voracity, and, above all, the paradoxes arising from the processes of scaling down, according to a mechanism that connects the park’s miniatures to photography itself.
In Jesi, the (Non) Places of Ghirri
Also in Jesi, in the province of Ancona, the exhibition “Luigi Ghirri (Non) Places” displays the master’s photographs.
The event, extended until September 4, is hosted in the Renaissance venue of Palazzo Bisaccioni of the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Jesi and is curated by Massimo Minini: forty photographs from private collections that analyze Ghirri’s photographic research from the perspective of motivations and feelings through a journey that touches on his points of interest and issues.
The journey continues with sections dedicated to places, faces of time, non-places, art, and finally to Aldo Rossi, the Italian architect and academic with whom he shared an interest in the periphery as an evocative place of history and memory where man lives, moves, and experiences the changes of life.
At the Venaria Reale, the Land of Toys
Ghirri also arrives in Piedmont, more precisely in Turin at the Venaria Reale, as part of the exhibition Foto in Gioco! A tale of 18 Italian photographers conceived by Giangavino Pazzola, curator of CAMERA – Italian Center for Photography in Turin.
One hundred and twenty photographers, both in color and black and white, whose subjects are people of all ages engaged in various playful activities, as well as habits, professions, and places that have outlined a new relationship between people and the concept of leisure time.
Ghirri’s work “The Land of Toys” is exhibited here, a photo taken in Modena in 1974.
