Subversive holiday snaps: the travels of Luigi Ghirri – in pictures

The pioneering photographer was often inspired by tourist destinations – yet his images never resorted to cliche, as a new exhibition shows



Main image: A fresh view … Capri, 1981.
Photograph: Eredi di Luigi Ghirri

  • Alpe di Siusi, 1979

    Luigi Ghirri (1943 -1992), was a pioneer whose far-reaching ideas on photography and its role in modern culture remain influential today. The body of work he created in the 1970s and 1980s – a playful and poetic reflection on the medium of photography at a time when it was becoming commonplace in contemporary society - was unrivalled in Europe. A new exhibition explores the importance of travel to Ghirri. Luigi Ghirri, Viaggi Photographs 1970-1991, is at Museo d’arte della Svizzera italiana, Lugano LAC venue. The exhibition is accompanied by a book published by MACK
    A couple holding hands walking in the Swiss alps

  • Rimini, 1977

    From his first projects in the early 1970s, Ghirri was inspired by travel - both as a concept and a source of images - through his Sunday outings in the area near his home town of Modena, which he called ‘minimal adventures’, to his trips to popular tourist destinations
    Tourists at a miniature theme park in Rimini 1977

  • Bologna, 1973

    Exhibition curator James Lingwood explores the many ways in which journeys – viaggi – appear in Ghirri’s work between 1970 and 1991. There are journeys through the iconic landscapes of the Dolomites and the lakes of northern Italy, and the mirror-worlds of seaside resorts along the Adriatic and Mediterranean. There are journeys through museums, archaeological sites and theme parks, even inside atlases, on postcards and along his own bookshelves
    A couple sitting in a fish restaurant in Bologna 1973

  • Modena, 1973

    From the early photographs he took on brief trips to the towns in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy, or to Switzerland, in the 1970s, Ghirri was attracted to images ‘found’ in everyday items such as posters and postcards. His Paesaggi di Cartone (cardboard landscapes) place pictures from advertising billboards outside their original setting to expose their artifice
    A poster of a woman pasted to a wall in Modena 1973

  • Lido di Spina, 1974

    Alongside his clear-sighted critical gaze, Ghirri was drawn to places that exemplified photography’s complex relations with reality. Very little happens in these images of silent stillness. ‘What is vital for Ghirri is not a single moment in time, but its distillation,’ observes Lingwood
    A children’s play area at the Lido di Spina in 1974

  • Identikit, 1979

    Ghirri explored the idea of travel itself through photographs of maps, atlases, adverts and postcards, as well as of tourists enjoying the view on holiday. His photographs elicit a reflection on how photography increasingly came to frame and condition the experience of place
    A bookshelf with travel books and a postcard in a frame

  • Roma, 1979

    These ephemeral landscapes draw attention to the ubiquitous presence of photography in today’s world. ‘Reality is being transformed into a colossal photograph, and the photomontage already exists: it’s called the real world,’ Ghirri wrote in 1979, highlighting, well ahead of his time, how the ubiquity of images was creating a new image-based world that threatened to give rise to ‘a strange form of sensory impoverishment’
    A man walks close to the grounds of the colosseum in Rome.

  • Arles, 1979

    La gita – the trip or the outing – is a running theme in Ghirri’s work. Individual images are carefully combined and sequenced to reflect on how photography connects to the journey, and vice versa
    A cropped in shot of tourist wearing a Hawaiian shirt

  • Capri, 1981

    Throughout the 1980s, Ghirri travelled around Italy, sometimes working for tourist boards and the Touring Club Italiano, a nonprofit that helps travellers discover Italy. In this period, his switch to a medium-format camera brought more depth and clarity, as well as brighter colours, to his photographs, though he continued to frame his views in the same calm, measured way. Destined for a broad audience, these commissions see Ghirri exploring stereotypical views as well as more unusual images
    A telescope directed toward the blue sky above the mediterranean sea on the Island of Capri in Italy

  • Capri, 1981

    ‘While Ghirri’s “travel” photographs might sometimes resemble holiday snaps, there’s always something different about them. He does not set out to capture a series of memorable moments, or highlight the beauty or significance of a place, but rather to reflect on a culture defined and shaped by images and their creation,’ says Lingwood
    Red and yellow beach huts in Capri Italy

  • Rifugio Grosté, 1983

    Ghirri captures images of iconic tourist spots in different ways, gently subverting the type of photographs usually taken in these places
    Tourists are pictured at a snowy refuge high in the Swiss alps

  • Lago Maggiore, 1984

    Ghirri’s work includes photographs of people on holiday or at leisure: playing on the beach, swimming in the sea, cycling on the road, relaxing in restaurants and cafes, looking at maps and plans, and posing for photographs when they’ve reached their destination. People are viewed from behind as well as posing for the camera. He wanted to emphasise the existence of multiplicity, and of there being more than one image. Where the tourists’ images conform to type, Ghirri’s photographs diverge from the cliche and the commonplace
    A couple holding hands at Lago Maggiore in Italy

  • Versailles, 1985

    Ghirri pointed out that his work ‘lack[ed] a precise cartography [and was] without compass points, more about the perception of a place than about its cataloguing or description, like some sentimental geography in which the itineraries are not marked and precise, but obey the strange confusions of seeing’. This tallies with Ghirri’s endless quest through a world of illusions and appearances, his restless questioning of how people look at – and what they see in – a world flooded with images
    Tourists pictured at the palace of Versaille

  • Rimini (self-portrait), 1978

    This carefully curated selection of around 140 colour photographs – sourced from Ghirri’s estate and a collection at the University of Parma’s Study Centre and Communication Archive – brings together celebrated images and lesser known photographs
    A self portrait of Luigi Ghirri
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