Luigi Ghirri : Colazione sull’erba

2 Oct-16 Nov 2019

Overview

The 1969 Apollo 11 view of Earth had a lasting influence on Luigi Ghirri (1943-1992), who understood the photograph as ‘the picture which contained all the pictures of the world: graffiti, frescoes, prints, paintings, writings, photographs, books, films.’ On describing what really became the first image of the world, Ghirri continued: ‘The power of containing everything vanished in front of the impossibility of seeing everything at the same time.’ Seeing everything, or rather, seeing the things that others cannot — the poetry in the mundane, the beauty of the arcane — is the gift of some artists. It was one of Ghirri’s great talents, through his own inquisitiveness and a love for the ambiguous. One he mastered throughout his photographic oeuvre, and evident in his emblematic series ‘Colazione sull’Erba’ (1971-1974), on view at Thomas Dane Gallery. The work catalogues and reveals the manicured landscape and the nature of domestic suburbs in his adoptive town of Modena, signalling directions he would pursue in later work.