Luigi Ghirri's Travel Photography Retrospective at MASI Lugano

From September 8, 2024 to January 26, 2025, the MASI Lugano will host 'Luigi Ghirri. Viaggi, fotografie 1970 – 1991', a major exhibition exploring the Italian photographer's lifelong fascination with travel, both real and imaginary. Curated by James Lingwood, the show presents over 140 color works, mostly vintage prints from the 1970s and 1980s, thanks to collaboration with the Ghirri heirs and CSAC Parma. The exhibition opens with Ghirri's early 'cardboard landscapes'—photographs of posters and postcards taken during short trips in Emilia-Romagna and Switzerland in the early 1970s—demonstrating how billboards can transport exotic waterfalls to Swiss mountains or Alpine panoramas to Reggio Emilia. Ghirri presciently wrote in 1979 that reality was transforming into a colossal photograph, warning of a 'strange form of sensory impoverishment' from image overproduction. His fascination with reality's duplications is evident in the 'In Scala' series, capturing cities and landscapes at the Italia in Miniatura theme park in Viserba. The exhibition also features the 1973 'Atlante' series with close-ups of maps, and works from the 1980s commissioned by tourist boards and the Touring Club Italiano, where Ghirri combined stereotypical travel imagery with more artistic perspectives. Lingwood notes that Ghirri's travel photos resemble tourist snapshots but are fundamentally different, aiming to construct a reflective picture of a culture shaped by images.