Luigi Ghirri
Scandiano
Scandiano, 1973
From Kodachrome
Inkjet Print, 24 x 36 cm
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur
2007-008-005
© 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.