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Luigi Ghirri
Bologna
– Atelier di Giorgio Morandi, 1989-90
Project
Print, 8 x 10
cm
Courtesy
of Mummery + Schnelle, Fondo di Luigi Ghirri and Galleria
Massimo Minini
LUIGI
GHIRRI
Project
Prints
Curated
by Elena Re
Mummery
+ Schnelle. Fondo di Luigi Ghirri
In
collaboration with Galleria Massimo Minini
14
September – 29 October 2011
come pensare per immagini
(1)
Luigi
Ghirri was a pioneer of contemporary colour photography. His
work from the early 1970s until his death in 1992 forms part
of a conceptual photographic tradition that shifted attention
away from the manual processes involved in creating an object
onto an examination of the nature of that object and its
relation to the reality recorded by photography.
A key
to Ghirri’s artistic vision is provided by a passage he wrote
in response to the first photograph taken of the Earth from
Space by the Apollo 11 space craft in 1969 ...it held
within it all previous, incomplete images, all books that had
been written, all signs, those that had been deciphered and
those that had not. It was not only the image of the entire
world, but the only image that contained all other images of
the world: graffiti, frescoes, paintings, writings,
photographs, books, films. It was at once the representation
of the world and all representations of the
world.
The
meaning that Ghirri sought in his work was a verification of
the continued possibility to desire and look for a path of
knowledge; a way through a forest of images of man, things and
life in order to arrive at the precise identity of man, things
and life. The multiplicity of images incorporated in Ghirri’s
work needs to be viewed in this way. They were for him
hieroglyphs to be deciphered and interpreted on the way to an
understanding of reality.
In
the early 1980s Ghirri started to use a medium format camera
producing larger negatives, clearly not for the sake of
technique itself, but as if to “get inside” the subject more
intensely. The centrality of thought and the sense of the
project continued to be the necessary conditions for his work
during those years, to such an extent that these negatives
actually turned out to be another project tool he could resort
to. Thanks to these matrices Ghirri was able to produce
excellent contact prints, small photographs that he could cut
out, file and line up in order to see each image, plan his
series, organize his own view, even leaving them loose and
then bringing them together again in endless combinations.
These small photographs that enabled Luigi Ghirri to organize
his own view from the early 1980s until 1992 were the Project
Prints.
Mummery + Schnelle is pleased to present Luigi
Ghirri’s Project Prints for the first time in the UK, in
collaboration with Galleria Massimo Minini. The exhibition has
been curated by Elena Re from the body of work held in the
archives of the Fondo di Luigi Ghirri. Elena Re has been
engaged for a number of years in the study and investigation
of Ghirri’s work, starting from his archives, and is preparing
a book and a museum exhibition on the Project Prints and on
Luigi Ghirri’s project vision.
Luigi
Ghirri Project Prints will be both a journey through Ghirri’s
work and through Italy. During the 1980s the concept of
landscape became increasingly important for Ghirri. He sought
to create a new iconography of the Italian landscape, one that
could incorporate both tradition and modernity. In the
important series Paesaggio Italiano, many images from which
are included in this exhibition, Ghirri looked to evoke a
particular sense of place. He wrote, “I would like this work
on the Italian landscape to seem more about the perception of
a place than its cataloguing or description.” Alongside
Paesaggio Italiano, the work on show at Mummery + Schnelle
will include images from other important series by Ghirri,
including Atelier di Giorgio Morandi, Architetture di Aldo
Rossi, Versailles and Il Palazzo dell’arte.
Luigi
Ghirri (b. Scandiano, Reggio Emilia, 1943 - d. Roncocesi,
Reggio Emilia, 1992) worked as a photographer for over twenty
years, from 1970 to 1992. One of the most important and
influential figures in contemporary photography, he first
started working in the ambit of conceptual art, and his
research soon attracted international attention. In 1975
Time-Life included him among the “discoveries” of its
Photography Year, and he showed at the Art as
Photography - Photography as Art exhibition at Kassel. In
1982 he was presented at the Photokina in Cologne as one of
the most significant artists in the history of 20th-century
photography. His works are held in various institutions around
the world, including the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam),
Musée-Château (Annecy), Musée de la Photographie Réattu
(Arles), Polaroid Collection (Cambridge, Massachusetts), Musée
Nicéphore Niépce (Chalon-sur-Saône), Museum of Fine Arts
(Houston), Museo di Fotografia Contemporanea (Cinisello
Balsamo, Milan), Archivio dello Spazio - Amministrazione
Provinciale (Milan), Galleria Civica (Modena), Canadian Centre
for Architecture - Centre Canadien d’Architecture
(Montréal), Museum of Modern Art (New York), Cabinets des
estampes - Bibliothèque Nationale de France (Paris),
Centre Pompidou (Paris), Fond National d’Art Contemporain
(Paris), Centro Studi e Archivio della Comunicazione (Parma),
Biblioteca Panizzi - Fototeca (Reggio Emilia), Palazzo
Braschi - Archivio Fotografico Comunale (Rome),
Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Turin), Galleria d’Arte
Moderna (Turin), Fotomuseum (Winterthur). In 2010 a large
selection of his works was included in the group exhibition La
carte d’après nature, curated by Thomas Demand, at the Nouveau
Musée National de Monaco. In summer 2011 this exhibition was
presented in New York by Matthew Marks Gallery. Bice Curiger
has selected him for her exhibition ILLUMInations at the 54th
Biennale di Venezia.
1)
come pensare per immagini (how to think through images) A
phrase in a newspaper crumpled on the pavement that appeared
in a photograph by Ghirri that he chose in 1979 to be the
final image of his series Kodachrome.
MUMMERY+SCHNELLE
83 Great
Titchfield Street
London
W1W 6RH
T: +44
(0)20 7636 7344
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