We Have No More Beginnings

“The instability of the genuinely modern ruin may present a space of radical potentiality. This owes in part to the contrast between the multinational, standardized architecture of corporate capitalism and genuine ruins. Unpredictable in its unique decay, a genuine ruin offers an alternative to neoliberal economic appropriation of public space. The ruin chic aesthetic echoes the logic of regeneration: superficial transformation in which the determinate forces remain unchanged. Ruin chic is the ruin regulated, the ruin managed for capital gain, a safe, stable dose of the kinetic energy actual industrial ruins embody.”

SFMOMA Shorts brings you the “Art Is…” Series. The newest iteration asks three photographers from three different continents to explore whether their medium accurately captures “truth” or “reality.” 

The Art of Luigi Ghirri

Luigi Ghirri (1943–1992) started writing about photography from the moment he became a photographer: for his own publications, for Italian magazines and newspapers, as well as private reflections committed to paper, where his thoughts would settle and then often depart in new directions.

Published for the first time in English, The Complete Essays 1973–1991 comprises sixty-eight texts in which Ghirri explores the same subjects at the core of his photographs – the themes of identity, time, memory, vision, representation, and sense of place. Together, the essays offer an unintentional yet comprehensive treatise on the history and theory of photography, and above all, they constitute a special form of autobiography.

“Mme Proust is seated, looking to the left, while her sons, young men in their twenties, stand on either side of her. They are beautifully dressed and have a look in their eyes that suggests the boulevard and the salon. There is something feline and sleek about the pair of them. It is easy to imagine why maman is so dour-looking and disapproving, her mouth firmly closed, her eyes fixed on the ground. She is a woman who knows what trouble looks like, and these boys are ready for trouble of the most sweet and tender and pleasurable kind.”

– Colm Tóibín, The Sweet Troubles of Proust