Luigi Ghirri: It's Beautiful Here, Isn't It... - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1597110582 ISBN 13: 9781597110587

Publisher: Aperture, 2008

Synopsis

Luigi Ghirri was an extraordinary photographer, as well as a writer and curator whose career was so rich and varied that it seems like a lesson in the contemporary history of the medium. Although well known in his native Italy, Ghirri does not yet have the international audience his work merits--perhaps because he died so young. "It's Beautiful Here, Isn't It..."--the first book published on Ghirri in the U.S.--will establish him as the seminal artist he was. Uncannily prescient, Ghirri shared the sensibility of what became known in the U.S. as the New Color and the New Topographics movements before they had even been named. Like his counterparts in Italian cinema, Ghirri believed that the local and the universal were inseparable and that life's polarities--love and hate, present and past--were equally compelling. Not surprisingly, his interests encompassed all the arts: he worked in Giorgio Morandi's studio and with architect Aldo Rossi, while influencing a generation of photographers, including Olivo Barbieri and Martin Parr. This dynamic new book includes a selection of Ghirri's essays published in English for the first time, as well as a selected chronology.

About this title

About the Author:

Luigi Ghirri was a much admired Italian photographer, writer, curator, and mentor. Born in Scandiano (Reggio Emilia), Italy, he later studied and worked in Modena. He exhibited widely in Italy and throughout Europe, with solo shows in Geneva, Amsterdam, Arles, and Cologne, as well as at the Light Gallery, New York. His work is in numerous collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; and Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal. His approximately twenty-year career was so rich and so varied that it seems like a lesson in the contemporary history of the medium. He was uncannily prescient at times: a brilliant colorist with a marvelous sense of humor, irony, and poetry, he explored many areas important to photographers working today. In particular, he shared the sensibility of what later became known as “The New Color” and “The New Topographics” movements before they had even been named. And, although it wasn’t until later that he came to know the work of William Eggleston (one of the photographers he most admired, along with Lee Friedlander and Walker Evans), they were sharing common ground as early as 1971. Ghirri sought a language for seeing and describing the everyday landscape freshly and unromantically, without cliché. Like his counterparts in Italian cinema (Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini, Roberto Rossellini, and Vittorio de Sica), he believed that the local and the universal were inseparable, and that life’s intrinsic polarities―love and hate, present and past―were equally compelling. Ghirri’s interests encompassed all the arts. He worked, for example, in Giorgio Morandi’s studio and with the architect Aldo Rossi, while influencing a younger generation of photographers, including Olivo Barbieri, Martin Parr, and many others.

Review:

"Very much in tune with the conceptual art of the 1970s, his photography was a means for expressing this metaphysical vision rather than for capturing Cartier-Bresson's 'decisive moment.' His approach transformed Italian photography of that era, and his use of color influenced a generation of photographers such as Martin Parr and William Eggleston." -- John Lavine --Color Magazine: For Collectors of Fine Photography

"[Ghirri has] a restless and playful imagination--one that regarded photography as 'a great adventure in thinking and looking.' Ghirri teases the idea of landscape with images of toy houses in a net bag, a building in a snow globe, and a woman looming over a scale-model city. But no matter how intellectual, his pictures about pictures project pleasure, amusement, and an openness to the unexpected." --The New Yorker

"His landscapes' flat, white sunlight and washed-out palette of stone, sand, and sky; his obvious love for the cities and people of Emilia-Romagna; and his metaphysical concern with the constructed reality of the image locate him indelibly within Italy as both place and art-historical precedent." -- Brian Sholis --ARTFORUM

"Subverting traditional landscape photography's heroic impulse, Ghirri prized representational antics over the mere grandeur of volcanoes and dizzying cliffs... Ghirri sparks the moment with storytelling, and the tabeleau grows large even as it shrinks within his viewfinder." -- Albert Mobilio --BOOKFORUM

"Ghirri frames his images of maps, street signs, posters, and houses (and sometimes posters of houses), in a way that makes you chuckle, but he can also provoke loftier reactions like surprise and wonder." --The New Yorker: The Book Bench, Loose Leafs from the New Yorker Books Department

About this edition

• Publisher: Aperture
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1597110582
• ISBN 13: 9781597110587
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 152
• Editor: Ghirri Paola