Luigi Ghirri

The conceptual aspect underlying Luigi Ghirri’s photography began to appear during the late 1960s, a period during which Germano Celant noted as a time when clichés took their place in the history of art. Clichés were the protagonist of Ghirri’s photos, evident in his very first images of the Siusi Alps made during this time. As has also been noted by Pelizzari, what was key to Ghirri was the role of Conceptual Art in relation to his ideas about photography. During his brief life Ghirri collected many images which he would frequently include in his photographs. Over the years he documented these photos in photographers’ shop windows, pictures, cuttings from articles on photography and much more. Ghirri wrote “Perhaps this is the feeling that guides me when I look at a landscape, the outlines of a face, the volumes of architecture, the colored surfaces of a wall, the wavering light of a nightscape, or the strange harmony that clouds confer on any landscape in the world”.
(Angela Madesani)
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