The Complete Essays 1973-1991

by Luigi Ghirri

Published for the first time in English, "The Complete Essays 1973-1991" comprises sixty-eight texts in which Ghirri explores the same subjects at the core of his photographs – the themes of identity, time, memory, vision, representation, and sense of place. As a voracious reader with a particular taste for the eclectic, Ghirri also reaches outwards from his own practice to explore the history of photography as he considers the work of Walker Evans, William Eggleston, Robert Adams and John Gossage, weaving in references to musicians, writers and painters alike. As themes and ideas overlap, the compilation of texts create a sort of dialectic chamber of curiosities that includes Gulliver, Van Gogh's yellow house, Cézanne, Morandi's studio, Mallarmé, the fireworks above Trani Cathedral, neo-realist films, lots of music, Francis Bacon, McLuhan's global village, Pessoa, poetry. Together, the essays offer an unintentional yet comprehensive treatise on the history and theory of photography, and above all, they constitute a special form of autobiography.

Genres: Photography, Art, Essays, Italy

239 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2016

About the author

Luigi Ghirri (Scandiano, Reggio Emilia) è stato uno dei grandi maestri della fotografia italiana. Nella sua opera ha usato la fotografia come mezzo per mettere in discussione la realtà, attraverso immagini che fanno riflettere, sulla differenza tra ciò che vediamo, ciò che rappresentano e il loro significato.

Luigi Ghirri (1943-1992) was an extraordinary photographer as well as a prolific writer and curator. He is considered to be the most important Italian photographer of the 20th century. Ghirri’s work covers a wide range of subjects mostly photographed in the Emilia Romagna region of Italy. His photos are presented in a deadpan manner that is occasionally humorous and often rooted in art history. Ghirri’s landscapes are a contemporary interpretation of Metaphysical paintings in their mysteriousness and dreamlike atmospheres. They explore photographic traditions and highlight a fascination with everyday life.

Luigi Ghirri studied as a surveyor and as a graphic designer. He began taking photographs professionally at the age of 30. Shortly after, his work began attracting international attention. Time-Life magazine’s 1975 annual Photography Year Edition chose him as “Discovery of the Year”. In 1977, Ghirri founded a publishing house, Punto e Virgola, with his wife Paola Borgonzoni Ghirri. The establishment was able to support the growth of Italian photographic culture, publish important artist monographs and educate an audience that had little knowledge of photographic practice as an art form. In 1979 he published the first photobook of his own images, Kodachrome.

During the 1980s Ghirri began to photograph Italian landscapes and was singled out as one of the most significant Italian authors in the history of 20th-century photography. His conceptual photographs, coupled with a remarkable literary output, led him to produce several noteworthy photographic projects. In 1984 Ghirri curated 'Viaggio in Italia' (Italian Voyage) which included the work of Olivo Barbieri, Gabriele Basilico and Mimmo Jodice among other leading Italian photographers. The exploratory exhibition offered reflections and ideas about the country and was a milestone in the history of Italian contemporary photography. In 1989, he published 'Il Profilo delle Nuvole' (Cloud Profiles) which included exclusively Ghirri’s captivating images and represents his highest achievement. Ghirri exhibited throughout Italy during his relatively brief life.

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Reviews

[Nancy Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had already read a few of these essays when I realised that no one would try to persuade me that photography “records” or “represents” reality. A reader is credited from the start, that is, with an appreciation of the ways photographs project, suggest, sketch possibilities, with an understanding that its relationship to reality depends on time, place, chemistry, luck, state of mind and much more, but that there is never a simple equation. Photographers always know this — I mean people who really have spent hours and years learning to look in a particular way, to anticipate — quickly — how a given combination of light, camera, and film will respond in a specific situation, and to respond to their own and others’ photographically invented realities. Whether they take any interest in writing is of course an entirely different matter.

Ghirri seems not only to have known and loved photographic images from early childhood, and to have realised that his particular way of seeing the world was unique. He further recognised language as another means of helping people to see photographs. Many of these essays were published as reviews of specific exhibitions, sometimes of his own work, but more often of the work of others.

I knew nothing of Luigi Ghirri’s work until I learned that these English translations of his collected essays had just been published. It is an admirable achievement: quiet, careful, consistent. It even has its own “frame”: at the beginning and again at the end of Ghirri mentions two books that were memorable features of his childhood — references, in some sense. One was a commercial atlas of the world, with bright, intriguing photographs of exotic places and people, the other an album of family photographs, focussed on a few people in familiar places — a bit random and highly personal. He cherished both, conventionally “good” images sharing a highly accessible fiction, as well as the evidence of a unique sensibility in an unrepeatable time and place. Ghirri described his work in dialogue between the two.

[James Tsai · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ghirri's photography would always speak louder than his words. His essays on photography are very cerebral and straight unlike his photos which are full of heartfelt beauty and humour. I do find Ghirri's Bob Dylan fixation interesting though.

[Sam]

amazing

[Joseph Joyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just finished reading this cover to cover after 5 years of working my way through it from time to time. I think it had a big impact on me, and Ghirri writes in a way that is something like a poetic essay. I remember getting this book because I wanted to see what a photographer who’s work I loved would have to say in words about photos. It turns out it’s pretty abstract and ultimately disappears into air, something like the mood of the photos. He borrows a lot of thoughts through quotes from other artists, especially Bob Dylan and Pessoa which I really liked to see, and they often illuminated approaches to ways of seeing (which also feels partly ways of thinking). Ghirri also repeats himself throughout the different essays, quoting old parts of essays, which I actually found helped me understand them more in new contexts, although sometimes the more I read the more I felt I understood nothing, or that that wasn’t the point.

I couldn’t say this was a fast read for me, and I found reading each essay quite demanding (which is why it took me 5 years) but I really do like this collection a lot and think that I got something interesting from it.