9 May 2013
Fourteen years have passed, and yet it seems only yesterday that I went on a misty day to see Paola Ghirri in her house in the countryside on the borders of Reggio Emilia. A slow journey, through a landscape that I did not know except through the eyes of the most discerning interpreter of a minor Italy to be explored over short distances and long periods of time. The same horizons, the same silences, the same colors bleached by the mist. The gate, the garden, the house, the archives, Paola’s courteous manner, and then photographs, dummies, books, catalogues, souvenirs, accompanied by the awareness that it is possible to be a traveler without traveling. Atlases—Ghirri teaches us—are maps of pure thought or memory. Light. Private, rather than collective. Emilia, Paris, Brest, Comacchio, Giorgio Morandi’s studio, the walls of home. Hers I remember as the place where the world has known the enchanted horizons of a paper geography. All the rest, rather than documentation, is a haiku, poetry.
Luigi Ghirri. Pensare per immagini
MAXXI – Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo
a cura di Francesca Fabiani, Laura Gasparini, Giuliano Sergio
Roma
24 aprile – 27 ottobre 2013
Luigi Ghirri, Masone, Casa Benati, 1985.
Luigi Ghirri, Versailles, 1985.
Luigi Ghirri, Venezia, 1987.
Luigi Ghirri, Capri, 1981.
Luigi Ghirri, Argine Agosta Comacchio, 1989. Collezione privata, Verona.
Luigi Ghirri, Cittanova, 1985.
Luigi Ghirri, Marina di Ravenna, 1986.
Luigi Ghirri, Brest, 1972.
Luigi Ghirri, Parigi, 1972.