Beyond the Screen: Luigi Ghirri, Landscape, and Paradox

This article offers a reflection on the concept of landscape through the work of Luigi Ghirri (1943–1992), one of the pioneers of contemporary Italian photography in the 1970s and 1980s. In Ghirri’s photographs, landscape operates as a surface and as a threshold, as a medium of exchange and as a way of seeing. Along with his many commentaries and essays on the subject, Ghirri’s photographs of landscape scenes, landscape screens, and landscape objects provide effective instruments for capturing the ironies of modernity, for retrieving a lost sense of place, and for reengaging with the world with new eyes. In our culture of visual distraction, these images act as powerful tools for reeducating our vitiated gaze.