Tuesday Reads: Luigi Ghirri
© Luigi Ghirri, Still life
“Photography is, I think, a formidable visual language for fostering this desire for the infinite that inhabits each of us. As I have said before, it is a great adventure in the world of thinking and looking, a great magical toy that succeeds in miraculously bringing together our adult awareness and the fairy-tale world of childhood, a continuous journey in the great and the small, into variations, through the realm of illusions and appearances, in the labyrinth and mirror-like place of the profusion and of simulations.”
As we make our entrance in the world of adults, each of us reaches two crystal clear conclusions. First, that toys are not confined to childhood but rather evolve as we walk through life, adapting to our greater awareness and the lower availability of playtime. Second, we learn that playing with our creativity is at the same time a necessity and a luxury: our mental capacity, being limited by nature, faces the trade-off between being productive -(whatever that means in 2020) and actively observing its surroundings.
© Luigi Ghirri, Per Aldo Rossi
Photography, being by definition the language that relies the most on observation, naturally tests our awareness and engagement with the present. Thus, the strength of such language lies in its implicit requirement of breaking our constant flow through life to fully focus on the other, on the rest of the world. What is liberating about the act of capturing a photograph is the perception of carving our own bubble in time, of willingly hitting the pause button and overriding the unstoppable flow of life. It is empowering to know that no matter how overwhelmed and busy (again, whatever that means in 2020) we might feel, we possess the freedom to stop alongside the river just to contemplate the water flowing by.
© Luigi Ghirri, Kodachrome
© Luigi Ghirri, f/11, 1/25, Luce Naturale
Considering how it allows for a pleasurable pause and a deeper analysis of reality at the same time, photography can be seen as a tool to engage playfully with our experience of life - namely, a toy. And, just like all respectable toys, photography requires fundamental accessories that every player has to provide: the baggage of personal history each of us carries around, the impalpable perceptions that make experiences our own ones, the (sometimes twisted) obsessions we show in everyday situations, and the curiosity to dive deeper, beyond the illusionary veil of what reality seems to be. Due to these influences from our past, photography is a game that inevitably becomes more flavourful and unpredictable as we grow old. As our life baggage expands and our peculiar obsessions become evident to our own eyes, the game gets more and more involving, allowing for a deeper understanding of our relationship with the external world.
© Luigi Ghirri, Polaroid
The photographic language naturally acquires different nuances for every individual - just like many other languages, it easily adapts to the message one tries to convey - however, it has a peculiar trait: most times, the kernel of its communicative power lies in the subtle contradictions, in the similarities each observer finds between the photograph and his past experiences. For this reason, even though the game of photographing our time builds around the individual experiences of the photographer, what makes it come to life is the recognition of hidden symbols and meanings by the observer. It is apparent that, once again, photography identifies as a game for grown-ups: its ability to amplify human experiences leads people to the realisation that they are similar to one another. Thus, the photographic quest for what it is - beyond what it seems to be - mirrors the social nature of childhood toys in multiple ways, forcing each player to stop along the way and engage in a liberating act of research. Then, having admitted that a univocal answer does not exist, each player engages in a humble research of something more, of the ever fleeting fil rouge that links every minuscule event to the bigger picture. An unstable research of stability. Or, as Luigi Ghirri phrased it, a quest for the infinite that inhabits each of us.
