Interview with Italian Photographer Guido Guidi on His Career and Artistic Philosophy

An interview with Italian photographer Guido Guidi, originally published in Aperture magazine's Fall 2015 issue, explores his artistic journey and influences. Guidi, born in 1941 near Cesena in Northern Italy, began photographing at age sixteen and has documented rural Italian and European landscapes since the 1960s. Trained as an architect, painter, and draughtsman, his work reflects a deep interest in perspective and modest architectural forms. Influences include Renaissance painting and American photographers like Walker Evans, Stephen Shore, and Robert Adams. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, he used large-format cameras to capture Italy's social landscape amid industrialization and migration. Guidi discusses his early exposure to photography through family albums, his studies in Venice, and his engagement with Conceptual art. He references photographers such as Bill Brandt, William Klein, and Lee Friedlander, and mentions contemporaries like Luigi Ghirri. Guidi emphasizes his focus on everyday subjects, avoiding categorization, and his preference for simplicity over rhetoric. He continues to live in Cesena, teaches at universities in Venice and Ravenna, and has published books including 'A New Map of Italy' (2011) and 'Veramente' (2014). The interview, conducted by historian Antonello Frongia, took place in Rubiera and by phone.