'Il Profilo Delle Nuvole': Luigi Ghirri's Photography and the 'New' Italian Landscape

Author: Spunta, Marina

Source: Italian Studies, Volume 61, Number 1, Spring 2006 , pp. 114-136(23)

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Abstract:

In this paper I explore Luigi Ghirri's photography, demonstrating the impact of his work in reshaping contemporary art and in consolidating the dialogue with other disciplines. By focusing on some key works that highlight the developments of his poetics — such as Atlante (1973), In scala (1977-78), Viaggio in Italia (1984), and Il profilo delle nuvole (1989) — I argue that Ghirri uses space, place, and landscape to question our relation to the external world and its representations, and to revalue the role of photography and art. In particular, I analyse the way in which Ghirri's poetics of space moves from insistent decontextualization and estrangement to a notion of affective space, combining a sense of inhabiting with one of errance, a fascination with the new with a nostalgia for the old and the marginal, and a critique of contemporary society with an attachment to a sense of place and of the individual as vanishing traces.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.1179/007516306X96719