After 40 years, Luigi Ghirri’s ‘Journey to Italy’ arrives in Paris

“1984-2024, forty years of Luigi Ghirri’s Journey to Italy”: the ‘dream team’ of the great Italian photographers who changed their approach to landscape photography in the 1980s returns to the scene. “Journey to Italy” starts again from France, where the Italian Cultural Institute in Paris will host, from 8 November to 8 January 2025, the exhibition that has re-founded the history of photography of the Italian landscape, overturning the rhetoric of the pictorial system nineteenth century and the stereotypes of Belle Italia and the Grand Tour. The event is dedicated to Luigi Ghirri and his extraordinary team of 20 photographers: Olivo Barbieri, Gabriele Basilico, Gianantonio Battistella, Vincenzo Castella, Andrea Cavazzuti, Giovanni Chiaramonte, Mario Cresci, Vittore Fossati, Carlo Garzia, Guido Guidi, Luigi Ghirri, Shelley Hill, Mimmo Jodice, Gianni Leone, Claude Nori, Umberto Sartorello, Mario Tinelli, Ernesto Tuliozi, Fulvio Ventura, Cuchi White.

A project of the General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture and the Museum of Contemporary Photography, in collaboration with the Luigi Ghirri Heirs Archive and the precious sharing of all the photographers and heirs: for the first time all 86 images will be exhibited contained in the original catalog of “Viaggio in Italia”, in the faithful and philological reconstruction of structure and contents curated by Matteo Balduzzi of the Museum of Contemporary Photography. The program of the Parisian vernissage is rich, scheduled for Thursday 7 November, at 6 pm, at the Italian Cultural Institute in Paris: speakers will be: the director of the Institute Antonio Calbi; Fabio De Chirico, director of Service II – Contemporary Art and Photography of the DGCC; Davide Rondoni, president of the Museum of Contemporary Photography Foundation; Matteo Balduzzi, curator of the exhibition. Also present will be: Francesca Caruso, Councilor for Culture of the Lombardy Region, Giacomo Giovanni Ghilardi, mayor of Cinisello Balsamo, and some photographers of the original project such as Gianantonio Battistella, Mario Cresci, Claude Nori, as well as Adele Ghirri, Giovanna Calvenzi, Angela and Barbara Jodice .

Great anticipation for the re-edition of the historic volume “Viaggio in Italia” (Il Quadrante, Alessandria, 1984), republished for the first time after forty years in an anastatic re-edition, with the texts in French and English translation. Edited by Luigi Ghirri, Gianni Leone and Enzo Velati, designed together by his wife Paola Borgonzoni, the volume includes an essay by Arturo Carlo Quintavalle and a writing by Gianni Celati, published by Quodlibet, with the collaboration of the Luigi Ghirri Heirs Archive. The preview presentation in Paris on Friday 8 November at the MEP – Maison Européenne de la Photographie, in bookstores in Italy from 13 November.