Post by Center for Italian Modern Art

#HappyBirthday to Luigi Ghirri! Born on this day in 1943, he was an Italian photographer known for his color images of gardens, monuments, and the studio of Giorgio Morandi. Ghirri’s curiosity with scale and illusion often gave his pictures a dream-like atmosphere. He worked as a surveyor and graphic designer before starting to photograph professionally at the age of 30. Ghirri’s seminal book Kodachrome (1978), included text by the artist regarding both the medium and his varied sources of inspiration: “The meaning that I am trying to render through my work is a verification of how it is still possible to desire and face a path of knowledge, to be able finally to distinguish the precise identity of man, things, life, from the image of man, things, and life.” He died at the age of 49, on February 14, 1992 in Poncocesi, Italy. Today, the artist’s photos are held in the collections of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Bibliothèque National de France in Paris, among others. Pictured: "Modena," photo from 1972, 14.7 x 10.8 cm. #LuigiGhirri #onthisday #italianmodernart #photography