Luigi Ghirri is without a doubt the most important Italian creator of the late twentieth century. It is indeed surprising that he was rediscovered relatively recently, since just a few years ago only a few specialists would have recognised his name. Yet today a series of international publications, exhibitions and conferences reveal an irrepressible drive to understand the work of the Emilian artist. Ghirri’s work eludes traditional classification as he was more a thinker than a creator.

The ironic or romantic poetry of the photographs that we admire today is only a part of his intellectual output. Ghirri was, essentially, a curious lover of poetry, philosophy and music. He described himself as distracted but an extremely attentive observer of the small details. In 1972, he left his job as a surveyor to devote himself to graphic design and photography. He struggled initially, most people found his photography prosaic and only a small enlightened public understood his work. Let us not forget that there was an extremely limited photography culture in Italy in those years and most photography was amateur: pleasant mountain landscapes and backlit nudes. Ghirri
and his surreal shots must have appeared quite alien.

Gianni Celati wrote “He photographed things nobody was interested in. He photographed the roads he took to get to work. Or he photographed the things in his home, his books, his atlases, anything to hand. For him, the photograph gave dignity to those things… he wanted to remove them from the hasty judgement of those who never really look at anything.” In 1979, a major anthological exhibition was organised in Parma by Arturo Carlo Quintavalle; it was his first achievement yet it did not bring any real success or economic stability in his lifetime. In 1992, he was struck by a sudden illness and died unexpectedly.

Luigi Ghirri’s photography has something different and special about it; it is captivating in its poetry and at the same time leaves us speechless in its simplicity. It feels natural to say his photographs are works of art, leaving aside for a moment the rhetoric of this definition. They certainly have a powerful and evocative language that makes it hard to remain indifferent.

Ghirri had another skill; one rarely found in an artist, he was able to reflect frankly and critically on his own work. He was able to write about his photography as if he were a critic: “I don’t believe that any adjective is precise or that any is imprecise. But perhaps my idea of photography, as the unlimited possibility of expression, has sought worlds and ways to represent them within reality. I have tried not to take shelter in the safe lands of repetition of myself but in different techniques and gazes. Regardless of all its negative aspects, I think photography is an extraordinary visual language that can increase the desire for the infinite that exists in each of us. It is a great adventure in thinking and looking, a wonderful magic toy that miraculously manages to combine our adult awareness with the fairy-tale world of childhood, a never-ending journey through great and small, through variations and the realm of illusions and appearances, a labyrinthine and specular place of multitudes and simulation.

by Silvia Berselli