Luigi Ghirri and the Photography of Place

Marina Spunta is Associate Professor of Italian at the School of Arts, University of Leicester. She has published various essays on contemporary Italian fiction and photography and is the author of two monographs: Voicing the Word: Writing Orality in Contemporary Italian Fiction (2004) and Claudio Piersanti (2009). She has co-edited three volumes of essays, including Letteratura come fantasticazione. In conversazione con Gianni Celati (2009).

Jacopo Benci is a visual artist who works across media, primarily in photography and video/film. He has exhibited in Italy and internationally. He is Senior Research Fellow in Modern Studies and Contemporary Visual Culture at the British School at Rome. He has published essays on the works of Antonioni and Pasolini.

The photographer Luigi Ghirri (1943-1992) was one of the most significant Italian artists of the late twentieth century. This volume - the first scholarly book-length publication on Ghirri to appear in English - introduces his photographic and critical work to a broader audience and positions Ghirri as a key voice within global artistic debates. It breaks new ground by approaching Ghirri's oeuvre from a wide range of interdisciplinary perspectives, in order to take account of the breadth of his interests, the variety of his projects and the far-reaching impact of his work as a practitioner, writer, theorist and curator, both in the field of photography and beyond. Drawing on different approaches from disciplines including art history, theory of photography, literary and cultural studies, architecture, cartography, and place and landscape studies, the essays in the volume show how Ghirri redefined contemporary photography and helped shape the «spatial» or «landscape» turn in Italy and further afield.

The Italian photographer Luigi Ghirri was one of the most significant visual artists of the late twentieth century. This volume introduces his photographic and critical work to a broader audience and positions Ghirri more firmly within global artistic debates, breaking new ground by approaching Ghirri's oeuvre from interdisciplinary perspectives.

CONTENTS: Marina Spunta/Jacopo Benci: Introduction: Re-siting Luigi Ghirri - Giuliano Sergio: Luigi Ghirri, Minimal Journeys: Icons, Landscapes, Architectures - Nicoletta Leonardi: Between Reality and Representation: The Souvenir Function of Luigi Ghirri's Photographic Trompe-l'oeil - Paolo Barbaro: Luigi Ghirri's Photography from the 1970s to the 1980s: The Working Image, the Artistic Language - Laura Gasparini: Luigi Ghirri between Research and Curatorial Activity - Jacopo Benci: On Some Hitherto Overlooked Sources of Luigi Ghirri's Work, 1972-1982 - Tania Rossetto: Luigi Ghirri's Cartographic Portrayals: A Review through Map Theory - Matteo Cassani Simonetti: Words, Image, Architecture: Vittorio Savi and Luigi Ghirri - Raffaella Perna: Landscapes in Music: Luigi Ghirri and Record Covers - Anna Botta: Of Fireflies and Photography: Pasolini, Didi-Huberman, Ghirri - Marina Spunta: Narrating the Experience of Place: Luigi Ghirri and Literature - Epifanio Ajello: The Photographer and the Painter: Some Observations around the Things of Giorgio Morandi and Luigi Ghirri.