Over 100,000 flights take off and land every single day. It’s a fact that would, most likely, have interested the late Italian photographer Luigi Ghirri (1943-1992), whose body of work deals with humanity’s love affair with travel. His early works, made at the start of the 1970s, included pictures of maps, atlases, adverts and postcards, as well people enjoying the views of popular tourist destinations. He reflected upon how, at that time, photography was increasingly coming to frame people’s experiences and perceptions of a place. “Reality is being transformed into a colossal photograph, and the photomontage already exists; it’s called the real world,” he wrote in 1979. Today, this phenomenon is well-documented: Martin Parr’s tongue-in-cheek images of British seasides in saturated technicolour spring to mind, as does Thomas Struth, who, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, made large-scale pictures of museum-goers at the Galleria dell`Accademia, Venice; Louvre, Paris; National Gallery, London and Pantheon, Rome. Ghirri is regarded as a pioneer in this space, whose ideas on photography and culture continue to resonate in an online world. He would surely have had a compelling view on social media, upon which 14 billion images are shared daily.
MASI Lugano’s latest exhibition takes us back to the early days of point-and-shoot travel photography. It compiles around 140 of Ghirri’s colour pictures, inviting audiences on a journey across various scenic locations in Italy, Switzerland and beyond between 1970 – 1991. Ghirri was particularly interested in places where fantasy and reality converge; the theme park Italia in Miniatura, Rimini, with its to-scale replicas of Italian tourist sports – was a perfect destination. Ghirri visited the attraction, now Italy’s fourth-oldest theme park, on multiple occasions – most notably in 1977, 1978 and 1985 – to photograph its Dolomites, Pirelli Skyscraper and St Peter’s Basilica. Artifice, and a sense of something too-good-to-be-true, can be observed across Ghirri’s oeuvre. At Versailles in 1985, for example, Ghirri manages to create the impression of something hyperreal. Tiny figures appear in front of the palace, as if caught in oils.
Very little happens in Ghirri’s frames. They are characteristically minimal and measured – offering moments of calm in an ever-quickening world. Couples stroll, hand-in-hand, across lush fields, or are caught off-guard in conversation at beachfronts. His colour palettes are often restrained – featuring bright white, grass green and pastel blue hues against a flattened picture plane. As Curator James Lingwood says: “He does not set out to capture a series of memorable moments, or highlight the beauty or significance of a place, but rather to reflect on a culture defined and shaped by images and their creation.”
Luigi Ghirri. Viaggi Photographs 1970-1991, MASILugano | Until 26 January
Image Credits:
1. Luigi Ghirri, Rimini, 1977. Courtesy Eredi di Luigi Ghirri. © Eredi di Luigi Ghirri
2. Luigi Ghirri, Versailles, 1985. Photo credits: Massimo Orsini, Private Collection.
3. Luigi Ghirri, Rifugio Groste, 1983. Courtesy Eredi di Luigi Ghirri. © Eredi di Luigi Ghirri
4. Luigi Ghirri, Marina di Ravenna, 1986. Courtesy Eredi di Luigi Ghirri. © Eredi di Luigi Ghirri
5. Luigi Ghirri, Alpe di Suisi, 1970. Courtesy Eredi di Luigi Ghirri. © Eredi di Luigi Ghirri
6. Luigi Ghirri, Rimini, 1977. Courtesy Eredi di Luigi Ghirri. © Eredi di Luigi Ghirri
