Luigi Ghirri: Felicità | Thomas Dane Gallery
A brief post this time, about an exhibition to which I’ll return. I’m a confirmed fan of the Italian photographer Luigi Ghirri, who was active from the early 1970s to his death in 1992. He’s showing in London again, across Thomas Dane Gallery’s two spaces.
Ghirri combined two things in his work: steely intellectualism and quiet lyricism. He was a surveyor by trade, as well as being an extensive essayist. This lends a certain mathematical certainty and rigour to his compositions, as well as the deliberate contrivance of his various series - advertising billboards and shutters in his native Modena, for example.
But it’s the lyricism I respond to, again and again. I don’t know how it’s possible for Ghirri to invoke such intense nostalgia in me, considering so many of his photos predate my birth, and I’m neither Italian or someone who’s been a lot.
But, walking around some of his larger-format photos from the 1980s, in one of the galleries, and there it was, the gut punch. Like, ‘Bologna 1985’, pictured above. (All of Ghirri’s titles are formatted identically - place then year.)
It’s something about the violet twilight sky, the empty factory shell in the background, the lamp posts and signage. In the extreme right, a middle-aged man in a suit fills up his car. He is double exposed, giving him two heads, facing in different directions. A nice visual metaphor for what I think of this artist.
As so often with Ghirri, the photo is soothing but sad at the edges, belying the icy perfection of its composition. The past is a foreign country, I suppose.
Luigi Ghirri: Felicità is at Thomas Dane Gallery (London). 23 January - 9 May 2026