Luigi Ghirri. Polaroid '79-'83

Luigi Ghirri’s artistic research lies between a conceptual inquiry of the medium and images that elicit empathy. His photographs are inhabited by objects imbued with memories and by the complex stratification of the Italian landscape and its daily life. These elements create a sense of familiarity, drawing viewers into a world in which they can recognize themselves, while coexisting with the analytical stance adopted by the artist. The questions and themes explored in his work are closely tied to photographic technique. Ghirri’s compositions simultaneously exclude and include; multiple temporalities abide within the doubling of reality inherent to photography, unveiling what might have remained hidden or unnoticed, despite lying plainly before our eyes.

The exhibition at Centro Pecci presents a wide selection of Polaroids taken between 1979 and 1983. At the time, Polaroid had provided Ghirri with a generous supply of film and cameras, introducing him to instant photography. Between 1980 and 1981, Ghirri was invited to Amsterdam, then home to Polaroid’s European headquarters, to test the Polaroid 20x24 Instant Land Camera, which produced extra-large instant prints in just over a minute. Ghirri’s Polaroids, both small and large, reveal a lesser-known side of his work. After a decade of rigorous conceptual and technical control, he embraced the unpredictability and immediate results of instant photography. At the same time, far from his native Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, he recreated his world of objects and memories, arranging before the camera lens items he had brought over from Italy in a suitcase.

Luigi Ghirri. Polaroid ’79–’83 confirms Centro Pecci’s commitment to offering unexpected perspectives even on well-known figures, showing sides of their work that feel especially relevant today. The exhibition encourages younger audiences to reflect on the connections between analog instant photography and today’s immediate consumption of images, normalised by the use of smartphones and digital photography. For Luigi Ghirri’s followers, the specificity of this body of work offers the possibility to explore a rarely shown part of his production. At the same time, Ghirri’s name remains a strong draw for broader audiences who may have encountered his work through exhibitions, book covers, or reproductions in newspapers and magazines, and who will find at Centro Pecci the opportunity to discover a lesser-known chapter of the master’s oeuvre.