Luigi Ghirri

The Italian landscape of provincial cities and the Emilian countryside is the subject of this elegant exhibition at Galleria Massimo Minini in Brescia, devoted to the work of Luigi Ghirri (1943–92), one of the leading figures in Italian photography from the 1970s to the 1990s. This is a small but clear overview of a surprising artist who focused his attention on the image. Indeed, before he was a photographer, that is before he produced new images, Ghirri observed what existed, elaborating, reflecting, utilizing the immense visual bounty he found before his eyes. Taking a clearly Conceptual approach with an iconographic slant, he investigated the language of photography and its meaning in a world in the midst of transformation. The images in the show, for the most part vintage prints, are warm, evocative, and sometimes agonizing. They describe a territory that Ghirri knew well, one that he surveyed and studied at every available opportunity: wheat fields, grapevines for the production of Lambrusco, endless roads, but also the interiors of houses, villas, and museums. It is work on a small scale, but strongly significant for understanding the different atmospheres, situations, and histories that make up the multifaceted and complex, but at the same time solar and poetic, region we know as Italy.

Translated from Italian by Marguerite Shore.