Daido Moriyama, How to Create a Beautiful Picture 6: Tights in Shimotakaido, 1987/2014

From our exciting new curation:

Like Ghirri’s well known landscapes, this interior makes use of a delicate system of lighting where details seem to dissolve into whiteness. The striped wall, bed, painting and sculpture are all characteristic of the Fioroni Museum in Legnano, Verona where the image was taken.

Legnago, Museo Fioroni, 1989

The anonymous building featured here was likely used as as a storehouse or filtration system as indicated by its position above water. Throughout il profilo delle nuvole Luigi Ghirri tended to relegate agrarian structures to the far background of the frame but here he gives the water-house emphasis, positioning it in the centre and making it the clear protagonist with classical perspective leading directly to it. The reflection of the lake blurs the lonesome water-house and gives the photo a painterly expressivity.

 Stellata, Bonifica Parmigiana Moglia, 1989

WORDS BY:YOSRA EMAMIZADEH MCARDLE

As museums and galleries further their mission of being accessible to the general public by creating high quality online collections, I ask myself: Will online galleries replace museums and actual exhibitions? Will visitors stop attending museums when art is so easily accessible? What will happen to the experience, the allure? I came to realize that these questions were not solely mine but were also posed by other museum enthusiasts and experts.

This photograph was taken in Magreta, a small agricultural town in the Formigine area of Modena. The work epitomizes Ghirri’s fascination with orthogonal symmetries and ennobling natural features that are often disregarded.

Magreta di Formigine, 1988

WORDS BY:EMILY MANGIONE

Like any art movement or genre, there are an infinite number of varying histories that could be told about landscape photography. In considering Luigi Ghirri’s relationship to this genre, however, it may be most interesting to contemplate its history as a generative tension and movement between the two poles of landscape conceived as a site for subjective expression and an objective documentation of the natural world.

The flat landscape around the area of the Po river in Northern Italy was a vital source of inspiration for Luigi Ghirri during the 1980s. The area offered an alluring plane of vision with sharp angles and a straight perspective that, in this particular work, gives the impression of travelling without moving.

Valli Grandi Veronesi, 1989