Luigi Ghirri at the Rome Film Fest

Luigi Ghirri: not just a photographer

If the photographer Ghirri now enjoys international fame, the main merit of the film is precisely that of making the public discover his writings which, recited by Stefano Accorsi, retrace the main stages of his life, acting as a counterpoint to his works and as a conceptual extension to his extraordinary images.

The portrait that comes to life from the documentary makes use, in addition to the writings of the photographer, of a series of interviews with characters who were Ghirri's travel companions (including family , the printer Arrigo Ghi and the musician Massimo Zamboni), of the films made by the artist himself, of the Emilian landscape and, of course, of its extraordinary photographs, some of which are unpublished.

From Aldo Rossi's architecture to photography

An all-round intellectual, interested in art in its entirety, Ghirri was fascinated by the architecture of Aldo Rossi, as he found analogies with his way of interpreting photography: "They are architectures that do not seem to want to give a strong sign within the landscape, which seem to move on marginal lines within spaces and places.

Rossi's does not want to be categorical architecture but something that tries to dialogue with the surrounding environment. Aldo Rossi's scientific autobiography was an important text for my cultural journey, for me it is one of the most important books of the entire Italian post-war period".

In the 70s, Ghirri gave a new direction to photography

To understand the disruptive impact of Ghirri's work and the revolutionary significance of his work, it is necessary to consider, as Ghirri recalls, how in the 1970s photography should be pictorial, the equivalent of a painting. Ghirri instead takes another direction, photographs suburbs, cement factories, carries out research on roots and memory, giving an iconography to what an iconography had never had.

Not surprisingly, his other source of inspiration is Proust, of which the artist shares the centrality of memory: "I work with memory, a personal memory, but all inside a world where information is of a collective nature".

So Ghirri becomes a photographer of images stolen from Time, a portraitist of a Present as flagrant and frozen as a frame, so crystallized as to give the impression of slipping into the Fantastic: "The idea of the Fantastic I think it fits my idea of the landscape well.

This seeing a landscape as if it were the first and last time determines a sense of belonging to every landscape in the world. A feeling that reminds me of the natural gesture of being in the world".

Extraordinary humanist witness to a world that seems stubbornly committed to losing its innocence, Ghirri revealed with these words the secret underlying the secular miracle of his work: "Recovering the gaze that observes as if it were the first and last time , who marvels even just in front of the miracle of light".

Yes, it was easy...

Next dates

November 6 - 5.00 pm - Bologna, Cineteca, Visioni Italiane

November 10 - 8.30 pm - Modena, Cinema Astra on the occasion of the "Luigi Ghirri.Vedere Oltre" 30th anniversary, in competition at Via Emilia Doc Fest

November 16 - 7.00 pm and 9.00 pm - Reggio Emilia, on the occasion of the "Luigi Ghirri.Vedere Oltre" 30th anniversary, Cinema Rosebud

November 19th - Polignano, Pino Pascali Foundation

November 25 - Milan, Spazio Anteo, Milan Design film Festival + Beltrade and Cinemino to be defined

November 26 - Sant'Arcangelo, Supercinema

January 2023 - release on Sky Arte