The school year is coming to an end and I am frantically trying to finish up my prints for the end of the year exposition and jury. I’ve decided to take a break from my work and fill you guys in on a photographer who I adore and am greatly inspired by, Luigi Ghirri.

© Luigi Ghirri, Marina di Ravenna, 1986

Luigi Ghirri, born in Scandiano, Italy in 1943, played on the border between reality and make-believe. He would include a lot of other mediums in his photographs, such as including maps, advertisements, billboards, signs, etc. He mostly photographed Italian lifestyle, landscape, and architecture. He passed away in 1992.

I was first introduced to Ghirri in Milano last year. I had taken a weekend trip from my then residence in Switzerland to the city on my own for a little self reflection (and good food and warm sun). While browsing through a bookstore in the Galleria, an older Italian man started talking to me… in Italian. Which I understand about 1% of, despite my love for the language. Anyway, we ended up having a great conversation about different Italian photographers and photography in general. Towards the end of the conversation, he pulled a Luigi Ghirri book down from the top shelf. Since then, Ghirri’s work has really been a great inspiration for me and I am forever grateful to the man for introducing him to me.

I’ve always been extremely inspired by his use of colors and the way he composes his photographs. For me, there has always been this sort of serene, hazy feeling to his work. Like you’re looking directly into a dream or some other parallel universe. He can make something as simple as a beach (above) or a long, country driveway feel like it’s in another world. I also love that in some photographs, it’s hard to tell exactly what really makes up the photograph. For instance, he did a really interesting series of macro photos of maps. When looking at the photo, you really have to remind yourself that, in fact, it’s not a map you’re looking at.

© Luigi Ghirri

© Luigi Ghirri

To end this homage to an amazing artist, a quote used in an essay he wrote:

“We become aware that everything that happens in reality happens within us, when neither colors, nor forms, nor distances exist any longer - then light puts on another mask. And it becomes a radiant sea, a floating ocean of energy. This vision of the self and the world, of us as generators and of the world as indecipherable chaos, seems to be simultaneously bitter and heroic. Courageously admitting the ineveitable solitude of man in the wake of the incomprehensible spectacle of the world.”
-Ruggero Pierantoni, “L’Occhio e L’Idea”