Luigi Ghirri (Scandiano, Italy, 1943 – Roncocesi, Italy, 1992) 

Luigi Ghirri was born on January 5th, 1943, in Scandiano, near Reggio Emilia. His character was significantly influenced by the atmosphere of the Emilian province, the post-war climate, the economic recovery and the cultural ferment of the 1960s. Ghirri was sensitive to change, immensely curious, and driven by a desire for knowledge. His everyday experiences and the intimate connection with the places and situations portrayed by filmmakers such as Fellini, Antonioni, and Zavattini fuelled his aspiration to deepen and broaden his perspective of the world, to embark on a great journey of imagination. Alongside his technical education, his passion for reading and music, his appreciation of the Italian Renaissance, and the study of art history – coupled with a fascination for found objects and images – were essential features that naturally led him to photography as a means for exploring both inner and outer worlds.  

Above all, his close association with the group of Modenese conceptual artists, his keen observation of the international contemporary art scene, and admiration for photographers such as Eugène Atget, August Sander, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, and William Eggleston, soon led him to conceive his own photographic work as a great, passionate project of expressive investigation. Here, the purpose of each image was gauged primarily in terms of its content.  
In 1969, the image of the Earth photographed by the spacecraft on its way to the Moon aroused intense emotions in Ghirri. That first photograph of the world as a whole, in a way, contained all the other images of it. Such moment ignited his exploration through photographs – what he called “a great adventure of gaze and thought. The journey into the inextricable hieroglyphs of reality through maps and plans that are simultaneously photographs”. 

Ghirri created his first photographs during summer holidays and on weekends, grouping them into a body of work that he would later call Fotografie del Periodo Iniziale, which marked the germination of numerous subsequent projects and featured images of places and people caught in their everyday rituals.  

At the same time, he also started representing inanimate subjects, frequently utilising the ready-made or objet trouvé. This led to his early series titled Paesaggi di cartone, which featured posters, signs, objects, and window displays, as well as fragments discovered occasionally on the streets. Besides occasional trips to Europe, he found a true universe of stimuli in his daily routine: he often focused on the most familiar landscapes, such as the anonymous suburbs behind his house. In a way, the choice to photograph in colour was also part of the same intention: “I photograph in colour because the real world is not in black and white”. In April, his first child, Ilaria, was born.  

Between 1971-72, Ghirri met Franco Vaccari, the artist who engaged him in some profound discussions on the role of photography in contemporary art. 1972 was the year in which Vaccari himself realised the Esposizione in Tempo Reale n. 4: lascia su queste pareti una traccia fotografica del tuo passaggio at the Venice Biennale; and in which Ugo Mulas completed his Verifiche. In general, Ghirri’s focus shifted from the artist’s manual skills to the coincidence between the work and the reality recorded by the camera: a process that recovered Marcel Duchamp’s ready-made and the Surrealists’ automatic writing. Based on this confrontation, Ghirri focused on the content of his work and developed its design, placing the “gaze” at the centre of his research – namely, the simultaneously rational and emotional ability to decipher information collected through perception, and the transformation of that into a visual concept. He began to work systematically across several fronts, launching his first series inspired by urban landscapes. This is how Colazione sull’Erba was born, a work that focused on the relationship between nature and artifice, drawing inspiration from communal gardens and the view of suburban detached houses. 1972 was also the year in which he presented his first solo exhibition in Modena – in the hall of the Canalgrande Hotel at the Sette Arti Club. It included photographs from 1970-71, the result of a selection created together with Franco Vaccari, who also contributed with an introduction to the catalogue.  

Ghirri continued his research and conceived the Catalogo series, marking the beginning of a project that would engage him throughout the 1970s. By sampling and sequencing surfaces and details that were part of the “built” landscape – walls, doors, windows or shutters – he analysed the repetitiveness of contemporary culture. The significance lied in putting down information to make distinctions and connections, to emphasise relationships, to disassemble mechanisms.  
On the same trend, he then created Km 0.250, a 1:10 scale photographic reproduction of the outer wall of the Modena racetrack, covered with advertising posters. While these works already required him to travel very little, with the Atlante series he realised that his “imaginary voyage” could occur even within the walls of his own home. Here, through photography’s capability of abstraction, the pages of a simple geographical atlas lost their descriptive function to enter the fantastic world of signs: the “real” and its “conventional representation” started to coincide, and the formulation of the problem shifted – from signification to imagination.  

The novelty and significance of his work were well acknowledged by critics, and highlighted in numerous reviews. This led him to fully embrace the great adventure of art, leaving behind his profession as a surveyor: “My experience as a surveyor taught me many things about space, landscape, and the meticulous construction of an environment from a project. The project itself is a framework that allows an individual’s work to be structured. It is essential to have one, whether for building a house or, more importantly, for creating a work of art. Only within this framework risk and freedom of expression are permitted”.  
In 1974 he met Paola Borgonzoni, who will accompany him in both work and life; later in that same year, he created a new piece, Infinito. This work is a sort of autobiographical album of the sky: 365 images of it captured day by day and compiled at the end of the year into a dense texture that does not follow chronological order, allowing it to be recomposed endlessly.  
“It was my intention to work on a project that did not set a rigid framework but opened itself up to insights and coincidences encountered during the creative process”. Invited by Lanfranco Colombo, he presented Paesaggi di cartone at the Il Diaframma gallery in Milan (1974), with a catalogue curated by Massimo Mussini. He also exhibited in a group show titled Atlante at the Neikug gallery in New York. 

In Parma, he visited the exhibition dedicated to the Farm Security Administration, where engaged directly with the American photography he greatly admired, discovering interesting points of contact: “I found that it addressed the same themes. The analogy was profound; the motivation and inspiration were similar: to understand, transcribe, and narrate our visible horizon, to speak of what exists. For me, this represented the challenge of contemporaneity and the present”. For him, this was a moment of significant validations but also of very important confirmations.  

In 1975, he was chosen by Time-Life as the “discovery” of the year, and a substantial portfolio was published in the prestigious Photography Year [Aa.Vv. Photography Year 1975, Time-Life Books, New York]. He participated in the group exhibition Photography as Art, Art as Photography in Kassel, which was also presented that year in Chalon-sur-Saône. Here, he participated in the group show titled Photographie Italienne, at the Musée Nicéphore Niépce. He organised the exhibition Luigi Ghirri. Colazione sull’erba at the Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna in Modena, with a catalogue featuring texts by Massimo Mussini and Roberto Salbitani. That same year, he also held a solo show titled Il Sistema dell’assenza at the Canon Photo Gallery in Amsterdam, with a catalogue that included a text by Arturo Carlo Quintavalle; and one dedicated to his work Atlante at the Documenta gallery in Turin. 

A long and eventful period began to unfold for him, both in terms of studying and creating new works, and in the development of his exhibition activities. His interest in the theme of landscape increased: exploring locations in a lesser-known Italy, away from conventional tourist paths, seemed to align with the search for both individual and collective identity.  
“What I did between 1970 and 1975, photographing the outskirts of ancient cities and primarily towns lacking historical and geographical significance, was a kind of reassembly of family albums from my own and our external world”. 
From 1976 onward, the series Vedute and Italia Ailati took shape. To them, he dedicated a solo exhibition at the Fotogalerie in the Forum Stadtpark in Graz, in collaboration with Il Diaframma gallery in Milan, and with a catalogue featuring a text by Arturo Carlo Quintavalle. He also held a solo show titled Luigi Ghirri at the Canon Photo Gallery in Geneva, whose catalogue included a text by Gad Borel-Boissonnas. At the Musée Réattu in Arles, he participated in the collective Acquisitions 1975 du Musée Réattu. In Rome, at the Galleria Rondanini, he presented a solo exhibition called Cancellature, his first major one, featuring over two hundred photographs from his overall body of work. Towards the end of the year, he moved in with Paola Borgonzoni in the historic centre of Modena. In the dim light of their new flat, he began a new project, Identikit. By photographing his belongings – his records and books in his library using natural light – he created a statement of identity as well as an intimate diary of those days and that place. 

Just stepping out of his home and wandering around the antique market stalls in Piazza Grande, he embarked on a new journey into the world of images and signs, conceiving the series Still Life. Paintings, framed photographs, catalogues, manuscripts, and old items piled together presented themselves to his gaze, transforming into “places” where different possible layers could be discerned: even objects that seemed fully described by sight could, in their representation, resemble the blank pages of an unwritten book. In the same year, he developed two other projects, Il paese dei balocchi and In scala. With these, his exploration of the “real” culminated in the realm of fairy tales, interpreting both the fiction of the amusement park or the wax museum, and the wonder raised by the scale shift of Italia in Miniatura (Italy in miniature) in Rimini: “From the very beginning, I saw photography as a grand magical toy that manages to combine the large and the small, illusions and reality, our adult awareness and the fairy-tale world of childhood”. Encouraged by his friend Claude Nori, who owned the Contrejour gallery and publishing house in Paris, he, along with Paola Borgonzoni and Giovanni Chiaramonte, founded the publishing house Punto e Virgola. Their aim was to develop an important editorial project focused on Italian photographic culture. Throughout 1977, he participated in a group show with a catalogue titled L’occhio, la macchina, la realtà at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Tokyo. This exhibition, which compared Italian and Japanese photographers, was later transferred to the Italo-Japanese Cultural Centre in Kyoto. He also participated in a collective exhibition of young Italian photographers titled Foto-grafia at the Galleria Rondanini in Rome, curated by Arturo Carlo Quintavalle; and held two solo exhibitions: one titled Fotografia e natura, at the Il Milione gallery in Milan, and the other one in England, at the Photography Gallery of the University of Southampton. 

In 1978, the publishing house Punto e Virgola released its first book: Kodachrome. It featured Ghirri’s his first critical text, a preface to a monograph conceived in narrative form, whose images derived from projects developed during his first eight years of work, drawing primarily from Paesaggi di cartone but also from photographs taken during his early period. It is with Kodachrome that he began to use his archive as a reservoir of images:  

“I concluded this series with fragments of images found while walking the streets. Not coincidentally, the last one features the phrase on a crumpled newspaper on the pavement: ‘how to think through images’. This phrase encapsulates the essence of all my work, just as Giordano Bruno’s phrase – thinking is speculating through images”. The book was co-published by Contrejour, which exhibited in the gallery works from this project [Luigi Ghirri, Kodachrome, Punto e Virgola, Modena 1978; Contrejour, Paris 1978]. That same year, he made his first trip to Arles to participate in the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie. There, he met the critic Michel Nuridsany, to whom he presented the maquette of Atlante. Enthusiastic about this work, and after seeing the Kodachrome exhibition at the Contrejour gallery, Nuridsany wrote of him: “L’un des photographes les plus passionants d’aujourd’hui”, (one of the most passionate photographers working today), suggesting a close relationship between his photography, the narratives of Peter Handke, and the cinema of Wim Wenders [Michel Nuridsany, “Luigi Ghirri. Inventer la réalité”, Le Figaro, 31 October 1978]. In Arles, he also exhibited Kodachrome at the Musée Réattu, as part of a group exhibition featuring Italian photographers, which later travelled to the Festival de la Photographie in Besançon. At Salzburg College, he participated in a collective titled The Naked Environment: Young European Photography, curated by Roberto Salbitani. At the Venice Biennale, he exhibited in the group show L’immagine provocata [Luigi Carluccio, ed., L’immagine provocata, Biennale catalogue, Electa-La Biennale, Milan-Venice 1979]. 

1979 marked a turning point in his research activities: an important retrospective of his work was presented at the University of Parma’s exhibition space, curated by Arturo Carlo Quintavalle and Massimo Mussini. Titled Vera Fotografia, it ambitiously brought together all the projects up to that point, offering around 700 photographs organised into 14 narrative sequences: Fotografie del periodo iniziale (1970); Kodachrome (1970-78); Colazione sull’erba (1972-74); Catalogo (1970-79); Km 0.250 (1973); Diaframma 11, 1/125, luce naturale (1970-79); Atlante (1973); Italia Ailati (1971-79); Il paese dei balocchi (1972-79); Vedute (1970-79); Infinito (1974); In scala (1977-78); Identikit (1976-79); Still Life (1975-79). The book published on this occasion featured a preface by Arturo Carlo Quintavalle, a text and critical notes by Massimo Mussini, and for each section, a piece written by the author himself, which he conceived as a crucial moment for focusing his theoretical reflection [Luigi Ghirri, Università di Parma – Centro Studi e Archivio della Comunicazione, Feltrinelli, Milan 1979]. His research was now firmly directed towards monographic projects, which often stemmed from one another. The first example was Paesaggi di cartone, which the previous year had been renamed – and enriched with new photographs – and was incorporated into Kodachrome. Similarly, the series Diaframma 11, 1/125, luce naturale – born specifically for the Parma exhibition, grouping photographs of people often captured in the act of “looking” – contained works primarily derived from his early photographs. His work often featured projects that concluded in relatively short timeframes and others that remained open for long periods, where photographs migrated from one context to another, following new possibilities for connection: “To me, ‘reality’ is complex and nuanced, not reducible”, he said.  

Crowning the experience of the Parma retrospective is his second trip to Arles, where he met Charles Traub, director of the Light Gallery in New York. Traub reviewed the recently published book and enthusiastically invited him to exhibit at his gallery the following year. Among the various exhibitions he participated in, he was invited to a group show on young global photography at the Symposion über Fotografie at the Forum Stadtpark in Graz, curated by Manfred Willmann and Christine Frisinghelli. During this time, he began an intense period of activity as a curator for exhibition and editorial projects. Together with Claude Nori, he curated a show titled La fotografia francese. Dalle origini ai giorni nostri at the Galleria Rondanini in Rome and later at the Galleria Civica in Modena. For the Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea in Ferrara, he organised Iconicittà: una visione sul reale, a reflection on urban landscapes featuring several emerging young photographers. The catalogue, curated by Ennery Taramelli, was published by Punto e Virgola. 

La Fotografia Francese by Claude Nori and the essay “Fotografia e Inconscio Tecnologico” by Franco Vaccari were the last publications from Punto e Virgola publishing house, which, after producing a dozen books, ceased its independent operations. Its projects were merged into the “Fotografia” series of Jaca Book, directed by Giovanni Chiaramonte.  
While he completed Still Life and briefly explored the Geografia Immaginaria series (1979-80), he embarked on a new work, Topographie-Iconographie. The first period of his research, the more “conceptual” phase, was now concluded, and this new project represented a crucial link to a new expressive season, focusing on the idea of photography as “language” and interpreting the symbolic value of places. 

“The locations and objects I have photographed are true ‘memory zones’, places that illustrate how reality has transformed into a grand narrative”. 
Responding with great enthusiasm to Charles Traub’s invitation, in 1980 he held a solo exhibition at the Light Gallery in New York, showcasing Still Life and Topographie-Iconographie. At the Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara, he presented Vera Fotografia, featuring a selection of works displayed the previous year in Parma. That same year, in collaboration with Punto e Virgola, he curated the show Robert Doisneau. Tre secondi di eternità at the Galleria Civica in Modena. At Photokina in Cologne, he participated in Glanzlichter der Photographie in the section Das Imaginäre Photomuseum – Die Landschaft, where he exhibited Kodachrome. Both the show and catalogue were curated by Beaumont Newhall. At the Musée Carnavalet in Paris, he took part in the group exhibition Paris-Rome, curated by Paris Audiovisuel; later, it moved to the Centre Culturel Français in Rome. Also in Paris, at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, his work was included in the group show Ils se disent peintres, ils se disent photographes, curated by Suzanne Pagé and Michel Nuridsany (1980). This significant exhibition, exploring the intriguing border territory between art and photography, featured names from the international scene such as Christian Boltanski, Hans Peter Feldmann, Gilbert and George, Giuseppe Penone, and Cindy Sherman [Suzanne Pagé, Michel Nuridsany, eds., Ils se disent peintres, ils se disent photographes, ARC/Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 22 November – 4 January 1981]. 

The experiences that examined the relationship between art and photography during the 1960s and 1970s were pivotal in shaping Ghirri’s expressive identity. By the early 1980s, having moved beyond the need to define his stance as an artist, he began to work with greater freedom. This allowed him to be guided by the emotional resonance of images and a desire to explore new interdisciplinary connections.

“Even I cannot say whether it was Dylan’s musical and poetic landscapes, Oldenburg’s sculpture-architecture, Robert Frank’s or Friedlander’s visions, Evans’ ethical rigor, or perhaps Brueghel’s cosmogonies, the Fellini-esque phantoms, the views of the Alinari, Atget’s silences of, the Flemish painters’ precision of the, the purity of Piero della Francesca, or Van Gogh’s colours that illuminated me most”.
Following this approach, he rapidly cultivated relationships with a range of intellectual figures, sharing insights and engaging in thoughtful exchanges. He met architects, urban planners, and philosophers, all committed to developing a new iconography of the Italian landscape. Their work increasingly focused on contemporary habitats, reflecting a complex interplay of tradition and modernity. Invited by architect Vittorio Savi to the exhibition Paesaggio. Immagine e realtà at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Bologna, in 1981 he presented his first interpretation of a post-urban landscape, that of the Po Valley. This work was emblematically titled Introduzione. In the catalogue, Ghirri explained the impossibility of maintaining a distance from the photographed subjects and highlighted his encounter with a “biographical” landscape: “these places are also my place, my room”. [Aa.Vv., Paesaggio. Immagine e realtà, Exhibition catalogue, Electa, Milan 1981].

Within this trajectory, the impetus provided by initial public commissions also began to play a fundamental role, offering opportunities to develop new research. The Young & Rubicam agency in Milan commissioned him to photograph Naples for the Provincial Tourism Board, as part of a promotional campaign aimed at renewing the perception of the area. This presented an opportunity to explore familiar places, approached with the aim of creating a result that transcended typical tourist illustrations. As always, he sought signs within the landscape, traces of history, and “memory zones” that only the imagination could revive in the present. [Cesare De Seta, ed., Napoli ‘81. Sette fotografi per una nuova immagine, Exhibition catalogue, Electa, Milan 1981].

With the photographs realised for these occasions, he gradually began to create the extensive series he will call Paesaggio Italiano (1980-1992).
In 1981, he was invited to exhibit Topographie-Iconographie at the Symposion über Fotografie at the Forum Stadtpark in Graz. His text presenting the work was published in the accompanying catalogue. [Camera Austria, no. 7, 1981-1982, pp. 23-33]. He also participated in the group exhibition Erweiterte Fotografie/Extended Photography in the section Farbfotografie/Color Photography at the V International Biennale in Vienna, curated by Peter Weibel and Anna Auer; and exhibited in the collective Das Imaginäre Photo-Museum at Photokina in Cologne; the exhibition and catalogue, published by DuMont, were both curated by Beaumont Newhall, Leo Fritz Gruber, and Helmut Gernsheim.

Polaroid International, represented by director Manfred Heiting, whom he had met in Arles in 1979, welcomed him to the studio in Amsterdam in both 1980 and 1981 in order to use the large-format Polaroid. As a result, numerous works, primarily from the Still Life series (1975-81), became part of its Collection.

In 1982, Ghirri was invited to the Photokina in Cologne, where he was showcased as one of the most significant photographers of the 20th century as part of the exhibition Photography 1922-1982 [Manfred Heiting, ed., Photography 1922-1982, Photokina, Cologne 1982]. During this busy and recognition-filled period, he continued his studies relentlessly. In his essay published in 1979 by Electa and titled “Genius loci. Paesaggio Ambiente Architettura”, Christian Norberg-Schulz author identified the “genius loci”, or “spirit of the place” as the most fruitful way for architecture to re-establish authentic contact with people. This concept resonated with Ghirri’s own thoughts: his exploration of places and the essence of dwelling was a way to perceive the presence of that same “spirit” within the contemporary landscape; to confront the ambiguity and complexity of existence; and finally, to provide a method of vision. “Seeking a photography that establishes new dialectical relationships and serves as a means to organise the gaze, preventing it from remaining inert in the face of an increasingly incomprehensible and complex exterior. (…) Seeking a photography that can construct images and figures, allowing the act of photographing the world to also be a means of understanding it”.

Driven by such reflections and having completed Topographie-Iconographie (1978-82), Ghirri dedicated himself to a systematic research project that occupied him throughout the 1980s. After coming back to southern Italy, he conducted a reading of the landscape based on a commission from the Apulia Region. Organising the Expo Arte in Bari and collaborating with the Spazio Immagine gallery, he realised Luigi Ghirri. Tra albe e tramonti. Cento immagini per la Puglia. The photographs belonging to this group formed a well-defined body of work, even though some will later be included in the Paesaggio Italiano series. In 1982, he presented Topographie-Iconographie at the Studio Marconi in Milan, Objets trouvés at the Pol Galerie in Munich, and Luigi Ghirri – Polaroids 50×60 at the Galleria Rondanini in Rome.

The opportunities presented by commissions become increasingly frequent, enhancing his research activities. Throughout 1983, he had a significant encounter with architecture: Vittorio Savi introduced him to Pierluigi Nicolin, Alberto Ferlenga, and the editorial team of the magazine Lotus International, which entrusted him with the photographic interpretation of an important work by Aldo Rossi – the San Cataldo Cemetery in Modena. This was immediately published with significant prominence [in Lotus International, no. 38, 1983, pp. 36-43]. However, he would continue to revisit this project in later years, incorporating parts of it into his Paesaggio Italiano series. Thanks to this initial contribution to the representation of architects’ work, the relationship between photography and architecture underwent a significant transformation. For him, such relationship no longer merely produced beautiful images, but developed genuine critical interpretations of a place’s complexity: “(…) Rossi’s architecture evokes a sense of wonder inside me (…). Ultimately, what fascinates me about his work (…) are the memories, stories, connections, inventions, and appearances that form the different layers of our actions and perceptions”. From this first experience, his expressive research gradually gained recognition within the architectural culture, resulting in numerous magazines and monographs publishing his work. Regarding landscape photography, he published his photographs taken in Capri between 1980 and 1981 [Cesare De Seta, Capri, ERI, Turin 1983]; he exhibited in the Four Italians show at the Santa Fe Center for Photography, curated by Bernard Plossu; and he also organised and promoted the collective exhibition Penisola, una linea della fotografia italiana a colori as part of the Symposiom über Fotografie at the Forum Stadtpark in Graz. His work was mentioned in several significant volumes [Achille Bonito Oliva, Critica ad Arte. Panorama della Post-Critica, Giancarlo Politi Editore, Milan 1983, pp. 210-213; Giovanni Chiaramonte, ed., Immagini della fotografia europea contemporanea, Jaca Book, Milan 1983, pp. 94-95 and XXIX; Arturo Carlo Quintavalle, Messa a fuoco. Studi sulla fotografia, Feltrinelli, Milan 1983, pp. 431-452]. A monograph on his work was also published [Franco Vaccari, Ennery Taramelli, Luigi Ghirri, I grandi fotografi, Gruppo editoriale Fabbri, Milan 1983].

Considering his role within Italian photography during the 1980s, it is essential to note Ghirri’s strong pedagogical vocation, aimed at transforming photography into a genuine tool for renewing perception. In pursuit of this ambitious goal, he deemed it crucial to share the outcomes of his reflections with other artists and intellectuals, leading to the development of significant joint projects. The success of Penisola, una linea della fotografia italiana a colori(1983) provided the impetus for him to envision a broader project dedicated to the new Italian landscape photography. Together with Gianni Leone and Enzo Velati, he organised Viaggio in Italia, a book and travelling exhibition that started in Bari and ended in Reggio Emilia, featuring numerous Italian and some international authors. The aim of this initiative was to assess the Italy’s image following the profound transformations experienced by the territory in the 1960s and 1970s. Through the metaphor of travel, the idea was to establish a new visual strategy that set aside the clichés of traditional iconography in search of an authentic landscape – one that reflected everyday reality. To make photography part of a new narrative of the Italian landscape, alongside other forms of “writing”. Together with Arturo Carlo Quintavalle’s critical text in the book, also appears Gianni Celati’s essay “Verso la foce. Reportage per un amico fotografo” [Luigi Ghirri, Gianni Leone, Enzo Velati, ed., Viaggio in Italia, Il Quadrante, Alessandria 1984]. While this initiative led to his recognition as a leading figure in the new Italian landscape photography, various opportunities arose for him to communicate and share his research results. In 1984, during the Mois de la Photo, he was invited to the Sorbonne in Paris. “L’oeuvre ouverte” was the title of his lecture: “(...) We must transition from research photography to the research of photography (…) thus, to the idea of an open work (…)”. The image thus takes on less defined, categorical, and absolute contours, becoming part of a larger, ever-evolving organisation [Luigi Ghirri, “L’oeuvre ouverte” in Les Cahiers de la Photographie, no. 15, Paris 1985, pp. 19-26]. He began teaching History and Technique of Photography at the University of Parma, and was a guest at the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie in Arles, where he conducted a workshop titled “A la recherche de l’original perdu”. He also presented two solo shows entitled Still Life and Topographie-Iconographie, both curated by Soel Cohen, at the Optica Gallery in Montreal and at Mercer Union in Toronto. At the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, the exhibition titled La photographie créative. Les collections de la Bibliothèque Nationale. 15 ans d’enrichissement showcased a selection of works from the collection of contemporary photographers, including photographs from the Kodachrome series. The exhibition and catalogue, published by Contrejour, were curated by Jean-Claude Lemagny.

His research on architecture and landscape became increasingly intense, exploring new areas of inquiry. In 1985, invited by the French Ministry of Culture, he photographed the Palace and Gardens of Versailles. On this occasion, he produced a series of images that clearly signalled an evolution towards the more mature phase of his work. The study of light and colour became an essential component in the reading and interpretation of these places, emerging as the result of a particular attentiveness and integrating into his own theoretical reflections. “Light is the real substance that shapes my images (...) for me, light is the true ‘genius loci’ (...) Through my work, I have discovered that there exists a particular moment when, through light, something seemingly invisible reveals itself on the surface of the world”. His concept of landscape was thus conveyed through the control of delicate light and colour balances in his photographs, which, while evoking the suspended atmosphere of the Vedutisti, also suggested a new possible avenue of exploration within contemporary photography [Daniel Soutif, “Luigi Ghirri” in Artforum, no. 3, November 2001, p. 153]. In the same year, commissioned by Paolo Portoghesi, he conducted a study of Marcello Piacentini’s architecture at the Città Universitaria of Rome La Sapienza; Aldo Rossi invited him to interpret certain cultural sites in the Veneto region, selected as the theme for the international competition at the III Venice Biennale of Architecture; Vittorio Savi entrusted him with the task of photographing the passenger building of Florence Station, designed by Giovanni Michelucci; he participated in The European Iceberg. Creativity in Germany and Italy Today, an international multimedia event organised by Germano Celant at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, whose photography section was curated by Arturo Carlo Quintavalle [Germano Celant, The European Iceberg. Creativity in Germany and Italy Today, exhibition catalogue, Mazzotta, Milan 1985]; and he was invited to Graz for the Symposium on Photography, focusing on the theme of Europe – America and their mutual influences. There, he met Robert Frank and William Eggleston, for whom he had written the text “Mondi senza fine” the previous year [Luigi Ghirri, William Eggleston. “Welten ohne Ende / Endless Worlds” in Camera Austria, no. 13, 1983-84, pp. 35-45].

The considerable success of the Viaggio in Italia project convinced him to propose a research initiative to the Reggio Emilia Municipality and the Emilia Romagna Region, dedicated to the Via Emilia. It was a substantial and multifaceted project, in which photography played only a part alongside literary, cinematic, urban, economic, and environmental research. The aim was to reinterpret the ancient Roman road and the territory it traversed, capturing its transformed image under the pressures of urbanisation and industrialisation, inspired by Bob Dylan’s text, Highway 61. In addition to developing it, he coordinated the photographic research involving various Italian and foreign contributors. The exhibition titled Esplorazioni sulla via Emilia. Vedute nel paesaggio, curated by Giulio Bizzarri and Eleonora Bronzoni, was first presented in Bologna in 1986 before moving to Reggio Emilia, Ferrara, and subsequently touring the Italian Cultural Institute in Utrecht, Edinburgh, Moscow, Heidelberg, Hamburg, Munich, Brussels, Strasbourg, and Paris [Giulio Bizzarri, Eleonora Bronzoni, eds., Esplorazioni sulla via Emilia. Vedute nel paesaggio, exhibition catalogue, Feltrinelli, Milan 1986]. The catalogue was accompanied by the volume “Scritture nel paesaggio”, which included narratives by the writers involved in the project, and a preface by Italo Calvino. Similarly to what he had done in response to other project-based situations, he organised his photographs into a series titled Esplorazioni sulla via Emilia (1983-86). Some of these works would also be incorporated into the Paesaggio Italiano series. During the same year, he participated in the Italian-French collective Trouver Trieste held at the Centre Pompidou in Paris; and he exhibited at the Photokina in Cologne in the show 50 Jahre Moderne Farbfotografie/50 Years Modern Color Photography 1936-1986, presenting works focused on the theme of urban landscape; the exhibition and catalogue were curated by Manfred Heiting. At the 17^th Triennale Milano, as part of Il Progetto domestico, he developed a body of work dedicated to architects’ installations, including photographs of Aldo Rossi’s Teatro domestico. Following the tour of his friend Lucio Dalla, he visited the United States for the first time, going to Boston and New York, where he took numerous photographs that later became part of his oeuvre.

In 1987, Ghirri completed an extensive monograph on Aldo Rossi, whose approach was to “narrate” the architect’s work through the artist’s eye [Alberto Ferlenga, ed., Aldo Rossi. Architetture 1959-1987, Electa, Milan 1987]. In Reggio Emilia, he curated an exhibition dedicated to Jacques Henry Lartigue, contributing to a personal reflection on the artist’s work in the catalogue among various critical essays [Luigi Ghirri, “Pensieri su J.H. Lartigue”, Luigi Ghirri, ed., JHL. Jacques Henry Lartigue, exhibition catalogue, Edizione Essegi, Reggio Emilia 1987, pp. 24-25]. At the 17^th Triennale Milano, he participated in the group show Le città immaginate. Un viaggio in Italia. Nove progetti per nove città, curated by Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani and Vittorio Savi. Alongside the photographs, the catalogue featured his text Un cancello sul fiume, an intimate and intensely personal piece that revealed the direction his research was taking in exploring the meaning of a place. There, he stated, “Zavattini writes that melancholy is endemic to the Po region, and that elsewhere it is only an imitation; he maintains that as soon as he arrives in this region, he feels as though he has crossed over a frontier into dullness, or entered something imprecise. Melancholy and imprecision. I believe that these are precisely the right terms. Melancholy is the road sign for an effaced geography; it is the feeling of distance that sets us apart from a potential simple world. (...) Because the horizon nearly always mingles earth and sky, because the countryside also inhabits city and villages (...) because streets seem always to head towards the same point – and thus nowhere”. [Luigi Ghirri, “Un cancello sul fiume” in Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani, Vittorio Savi, eds., Le città immaginate. Un viaggio in Italia. Nove progetti per nove città, exhibition catalogue, Electa – XVII Triennale, Milan 1987, II, pp. 87-94].

On the occasion of the same Milan Triennale, as part of the international exhibition Le città del mondo e il futuro delle metropoli: Oltre la città, la metropoli, he was invited to curate the photography section, while Germano Celant oversaw the art section. Titled Atlante fotografico sulla metropoli, the show became an opportunity to map the most representative photographers of the urban scene, between past and present, including work by Ghirri and many others such as: O. Winston Link, Walker Evans, André Kertész, Robert Doisneau, William Klein, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Diane Arbus, George A. Tice, Art Sinsabaugh, Nicholas Nixon, Joel Meyerowitz, William Eggleston, Stephen Shore, William Clift, Joel Sternfeld, Ugo Mulas, Klaus Kinold, Giovanni Chiaramonte, Andrea Cavazzuti, Fulvio Ventura.
As always, the exhibition also prompted theoretical reflection. In the introductory text for its catalogue, “Lo sguardo inquieto, un’antologia di sentimenti”, Ghirri investigated the relationship between photography and the space-time dimension of the city and the metropolis [Luigi Ghirri, ed., “Atlante fotografico sulla metropoli”, in Georges Teyssot, ed., Le città del mondo e il futuro delle metropoli. Oltre la città, la metropoli, Electa – 17^th Triennale, Milan 1988, pp. 21-68 and pp. 232-234].
Again as a curator, in 1988 he organised two photographic exhibitions for the Municipality of Reggio Emilia. The first one, Strand, Luzzara ‘54. Inediti, was a precious collection of unpublished photographs by Paul Strand, produced during his stay in Luzzara and resulting in the famous book Un Paese, created in 1954 with Cesare Zavattini. The second one, Giardini in Europa, was a group show that included, along with Ghirri’s own work, several photographs by Italian and foreign artists. For the catalogue, he contributed with the text “Un Piede nell’Eden”, from his research on the theme of gardens (1984-91) in which numerous works converged. In the same year, he took part in the project “L’arc Lemanique. Vingt et un récits sur le lieu”, that brought together literary and photographic interpretations of a “place”, Lake Geneva. The exhibition, held at the Place de l’Île museum in Geneva, then moved on to the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne [Beppe Sebaste, Jacques Berthet, eds. Vingt et un récits sur le lieu, exhibition catalogue, Favre and L’Hebdo, Lausanne 1988]. In addition to his rigorous theoretical focus, his approach to “interpreting” architecture was equally profound, characterised by a dynamic and active collaboration with publishers. In 1988, he travelled to Ljubljana to photograph the work of Jože Plečnik for a monograph that came out in 1990 for Electa. In the meantime, he increasingly collaborated with architecture and design magazines. During the same year, Fabbri published Il Palazzo dell’arte,which featured his interpretation of various museum spaces in Italy [Arturo Carlo Quintavalle, Il Palazzo dell’Arte, Gruppo Editoriale Fabbri, Milan 1988]. The photographs in this body of work completed his personal research on museum spaces, carried out on various occasions through the 1980s and resulted in the series Il Palazzo dell’Arte (1980-88).
In Bologna, at Lucio Dalla’s house, he met Wim Wenders.

In the late 1980s, the quest for a new vision increasingly manifested as a journey through his own existential experiences. In this context, he conceived the project Paesaggio Italiano, a monograph published for the exhibition held in Reggio Emilia, which later travelled to Mantova and was showcased in various locations in South America through the Italian Cultural Institute. [Luigi Ghirri, Paesaggio italiano, “Quaderni di Lotus/Lotus Documents”, Electa, Milan 1989]. In defining the inseparable union between the external and the internal landscape, where the latter is seen as a “place of interiority”, Paesaggio italiano was a moment of fundamental expression of his aesthetic. “I would like this work on the Italian landscape to appear like (...) an imprecise cartography, without compass points, being more about the perception of a place than its categorisation or description, like a sentimental geography where the itineraries are not marked and precise, but rather obey the strange confusions of seeing”.  This “sentimental geography” was essentially an innovative reinterpretation of his own landscape photography. There, he juxtaposed his pictures with other images, some of his texts and a variety of critical contributions, thus suggesting a very important interpretative key. Inside the book was a snapshot of Walker Evans from 1936, a still from the final sequence of Chaplin’s Modern Times, the cover of the Bob Dylan’s album The Freewheelin’, a reproduction of Brueghel’s Tower of Babel, and some illustrated postcards and children’s drawings. He paired a photograph he took in the bedroom of his friend – the writer Daniele Benati – with Vincent van Gogh and René Magritte’s rooms.

The goal of this “artist’s book” was essentially to explain the gaze mechanism on which his work was based, drawing upon layers of memory for associations and ideas, and thereby triggering new imaginative possibilities; as if a random and disjointed narrative mysteriously found its logic.
This is basically the reason why his series were presented as “open systems”, that could be intertwined. And it is also why he envisioned creating a large slot machine as a potential means for a comprehensive catalogue of his work.
In addition to this, Paesaggio Italiano (1980-92) was the title of one of his most important group of works, in which, as always, numerous other projects converged. In the same year, he completed the series Il bollettino per i naviganti (1972-89), a long work dedicated to the vision of the Adriatic Sea; he also finished Strada Provinciale delle anime (1988-89), a cluster of photographs depicting the suspended atmosphere of the Po Delta, following the hypothesis of a film by Gianni Celati; he realised a monograph for Aldo Rossi [Gianni Braghieri, ed., Aldo Rossi, Zanichelli, Bologna 1989]; he photographed design works by contemporary artists for Meta Memphis, presenting a solo show at the Fondazione Querini Stampalia in Venice [Virginia Baradel, Bruno Corà, Marco De Michelis, Ad usum dimorae. Meta Memphis Collection 1988-89, exhibition catalogue, De Agostini, Novara 1989]. Following the motivations of his own poetics, he developed a new course of study on photography and taught at the Università del Progetto in Reggio Emilia. Finally, he made his second trip to New York, to photograph the Bulgari showroom [Paul Goldberger, Richard Reid, 730 Fifth Avenue, New York, supplement to the magazine L’Arca, no. 39, 1990].

Thanks to a commission from the Riello Group, at the beginning of 1990 he created another book and a travelling exhibition, called Il profilo delle nuvole: Immagini di un paesaggio italiano. The publication, conceived as an “artist’s book”, depicted the landscape of the Po Valley through the Veneto, Emilia, and Lombardia. Retracing his path to places he had photographed, Ghirri followed an itinerary guided by associative memory. This interpretation of the landscape was developed with Gianni Celati, whose text accompanied the images. The overriding feelings evoked were melancholy, ungraspable memory, suspension, and enchantment – emotions that animated the “reading” of the landscape, thus consolidating an interpretative paradigm that went well beyond the boundaries of the places visited. [Luigi Ghirri, Il profilo delle nuvole. Immagini di un paesaggio italiano, Feltrinelli, Milano 1989]. The photographs also inspired Ghirri to create a new group of works, which will become part of the series Il profilo delle nuvole (1980–92). During this period, driven by similar project-based experiences that brought him closer to an intimate interpretation of places, he developed two key works focused on the theme of the “interior landscape”. He photographed the studios of Giorgio Morandi and Aldo Rossi, delving deeply into the existential essence of these spaces. This exploration led to the creation of two significant bodies of work: Atelier Morandi (1989-90) and Studio di Aldo Rossi (1989-90).
In the same years, he presented his solo exhibition, Luigi Ghirri, at the Musée Nicéphore Niépce in Chalon-sur-Saône. Ghirri also purchased a large house in Roncocesi, in the countryside just outside Reggio Emilia, where he lived with his wife, Paola. In December their daughter, Adele, was born.

Between 1991-1992, Ghirri put together a selection of images by contemporary photographers for the book Atlante Metropolitano, which also included his own images of New York and Boston [Pierluigi Nicolin, ed., “Atlante Metropolitano”, Quaderni di Lotus/Lotus Documents, no. 15, Electa, Milan 1991]. He published a project with Cesare de Seta on the Royal Palace of Caserta with photographs he had made in the previous year [Cesare De Seta, Il Real Palazzo di Caserta, Guida Editori, Naples 1991]; he published his last book, Viaggio dentro un antico labirinto, an interpretation of the Italian landscape through the history of art and literature [Arturo Carlo Quintavalle, Luigi Ghirri, Viaggio dentro un antico labirinto, D’Adamo, Bergamo 1991]; and showed his photographs in the exhibition Par Aldo Rossi, architecte at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

Meanwhile, he began working on a book on Giorgio Morandi’s interiors, between the artist’s atelier in Bologna and the studio in his house in Grizzana, which fascinated Ghirri for their extraordinary atmosphere, a sort of magical immobility.

Drawing on this inspiration, he devised two projects that allowed him to delve even deeper into his introspective exploration: one devoted to the still life, the other to “scattered houses”, the isolated buildings that dot the horizon of the Po Valley.

The last image found on his final roll of film depicted fog settling over the countryside, and was titled Malinconia e imprecisione.

Ghirri died suddenly at his home in Roncocesi on February 14, 1992.

Photo UniCredit Group (Sebastiano Pellion di Persano)