Thought landscape

Luigi Ghirri
Thought landscape

What do we see when we look? What do we see when we look at a photograph? The work of Luigi Ghirri (Scandiano, 1943 - Reggio Emilia, 1992) is marked by the tension between the thing and its representation and there is nothing he loves more than those situations in which boundaries become permeable. His work has taught us a new way of seeing, giving meaning to what is apparently obvious. The images proposed in this volume - vintage and project prints - which date back mainly to the 1970s and 1980s, form a sort of organic mosaic of the main features of Ghirri's work: interiors and exteriors, countryside and city, human and mineral presence, urban architecture and places of everyday life, photographs of photographs. The main theme of these shots, however, is above all landscape. Not the landscape that is normally perceived, but what is supposed to be latent, inscribed on the reverse: landscape of memory and fable, landscape of hidden figures and wonders. In this direction, Ghirri has always preferred familiar places, already seen, but for the first time 'looked at' with different eyes, where everything is suspended between past and future and where, as in a country landscape, the world can be imagined as a vision that still gives astonishment. A thought-landscape.