1972

Luigi Ghirri

Lucerna

Luigi Ghirri
Lucerna, 1972
From Paesaggi di cartone
C-Print, 23.5 x 35.5 cm
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur
2007-008-001

© Estate of Luigi Ghirri

1943 (Scandiano, IT) – 1992 (Roncocesi, IT)
The early photographs—Paesaggi di cartone, Colazione sull’erba, and Diaframma 11, 1/125, luce naturale—of the Italian photog-rapher readily convey his attempt to depict the real, the signs and symbols that determine the world now. The photographs are not of beautiful sites, but ordinary, banal ones. Ghirri formulated his desire to convey the world of the present, not a world in decay. He photographed the majority of his work locally, in the Po Valley. By reflecting on the process of taking pictures as an act of rationality, he purged Italian photography in a revolutionary way of its excessive emphasis on aesthetic composition.