A walk through Luigi Ghirri's Italian theme park

In 1970, a curious theme park was inaugurated in the municipality of Rimini, in the district of Viserba,

Italy in miniature.

A journey through the vast Italian monumental artistic heritage during which, among the more than 270 scale reproductions of palaces, churches,

and ruins, and surrounded by five thousand real trees in miniature, the visitor does not stop feeling like Gulliver in Lilliput, while watching how his shadow covers the entirety of a square or clouds the Colosseum.

Without knowing it, Ivo Rambaldi, the charismatic promoter of the project, shared a maxim with the photographer Luigi Ghirri (Scandiano, 1943-1992), destined to become the guru of Italian photography.

For both, the truth was hidden in a fictional space.

And that leisure and fun venue, not far from Modena, where the photographer worked as a draftsman, became a good field of action to investigate the ambiguous nature of this unpredictable communicator that photography is.

'Rimini, 1977'.

Luigi Ghirri © EREDI Archive Luigi Ghirri

'Rimini, 1977'.

Luigi Ghirri © ERED ArchiveLuigi Ghirri

'Rimini, 1977. 1977'.

Luigi Ghirri © EREDI Archive Luigi Ghirri

'Italy in Miniature, Florence'.

Luigi Girri.

© ERED ArchiveLuigi Ghirri

'Bitonto, 1990', from the book 'Puglia.

Tra albe e tramonti', (MACK, 2022).Luigi Ghirri

'Bari, 1982', from the book 'Puglia.

Tra albe etramonti' (MACK, 2022).

luigi ghirri archive

'Bitonto, 1990', from the book 'Puglia.

Tra albe e tramonti', (MACK, 2022).

luigi ghiri

'53 Bitonto, 1990', from the book 'Puglia.

Tra albe e tramonti', (MACK, 2022). Luigi Ghirri

'Bitonto, 1990', from the book 'Puglia.

Tra albe etramonti' (MACK, 2022). Luigi Ghirri

'Puglia, 1982', from the book `Puglia.

Tra albe e tramonti', (MACK, 2022). Luigi Ghirri

Photography was, in Ghirri's words, "a great adventure through the world of thought and gaze, a wonderful magical toy that miraculously manages to combine our adult consciousness with the world of a childhood story, an endless journey through the large and small, through variations and the realm of illusions and appearances, a labyrinthine and specular place of crowds and simulation”.

Hence, between the end of the 1970s and the mid-1980s, the author traveled to the park on several occasions to give shape to the series

Through the paradoxes of scale, trompe l'oeil, the distance between reality and representation and the voracious gaze of the spectators, the aesthetic and conceptual approaches of the artist will be expressed.

"In this great theater the actors are sometimes much taller than the backdrop," he wrote.

Similarly, Italy in miniature is a short drive from Urbino.

Joan Fontcuberta was invited there, in 2019, by the Higher Institute of the Artistic Industry (ISIA), in order to give a workshop.

Invitation that was transformed by the Catalan photographer to develop a pedagogical methodology with the students in order to revisit the park.

A tribute to the Italian photographer and the writer and semiotician Umberto Eco, whose work

describes a pilgrimage in search of hyperreality and the world of simulation.

The project has resulted in an exhibition that is presented as one of the highlights of the programming of the latest edition of the European Photography festival, held in Reggio Emilia, under the artistic direction of Tim Clark.

Under the title

, the exhibition has been curated by Fontcuberta together with Ilaria Campioli and Matteo Guidi, and presents the series of photographs taken by Ghirri in the theme park as the central axis of the sample.

The work dialogues with a series of projects, among them the documents prepared by Rambaldi, in order to serve as a reference for the construction of the models.

'Puglia, 1982', from the book 'Puglia.

Tra albe e tramonti', (MACK, 2022).Luigi Ghirri

"Rambaldi was a movie character," says Fontcuberta in one of the exhibition rooms, which can be seen in the Palazzo dei Musei.

“Communist partisan, he fought against the Nazis.

He managed to escape twice while being a prisoner, and set up an industry that made him a millionaire.

Traveling he discovered

in the canton of Ticino.

If such an exaltation of heritage existed in a place as poor in history as Switzerland, Italy deserved something similar with much more reason, the Italian raised.

So he sold his company and invested all his money in Rimini.

He would travel with a surveyor and architect to photographically document, and in an

the different architectures and reproduce them in miniature.

It was Rambaldi himself who posed in the photographs to give information on how wide a window could be or how high a door could be.

So these functional images have been acquiring a performance dimension, or a reading in terms of Arte Povera or Land Art”.

The exhibition includes unpublished material from Ghirri's work, based on an edition made by the author himself that he never presented.

The course of a solid and forceful photographic discourse was cut short by his premature death.

The author worked systematically in color, being one of the first authors to claim color photography in Europe.

Through his muted palette, he distanced himself from the idea of ​​black and white photography that predominated in the French and American school and integrated the photographic document into conceptual art.

"His approaches to him come to a certain extent from an anti-artistic will that opposes classic positions," adds Fontcuberta.

“The traditional values ​​of photography interested him little, linking himself to a colder, more austere and analytical current”.

In those days, museums began to create their photography departments, and galleries chose to specialize in the medium, as it was accepted as an artistic discipline within the market.

In 1977 photography was incorporated into Documenta.

“Ghirri had a very strong intellectual background. He was interested in philosophy, literature, and he was passionate about Borges and his ideas about mirrors.

The game established by reflections, what is reality and what is fiction.

His figures put the focus on what he looks at, allude to the pleasure of looking, to the world of theater.

In this case the tourists become the spectators.

They are subjects facing the landscape as the protagonist of

as this was accepted as an artistic discipline within the market.

In 1977 photography was incorporated into Documenta.

“Ghirri had a very strong intellectual background. He was interested in philosophy, literature, and he was passionate about Borges and his ideas about mirrors.

The game established by reflections, what is reality and what is fiction.

His figures put the focus on what he looks at, allude to the pleasure of looking, to the world of theater.

In this case the tourists become the spectators.

They are subjects facing the landscape as the protagonist of

as this was accepted as an artistic discipline within the market.

In 1977 photography was incorporated into Documenta.

“Ghirri had a very strong intellectual background. He was interested in philosophy, literature, and he was passionate about Borges and his ideas about mirrors.

The game established by reflections, what is reality and what is fiction.

His figures put the focus on what he looks at, allude to the pleasure of looking, to the world of theater.

In this case the tourists become the spectators.

They are subjects facing the landscape as the protagonist of

What is reality and what is fiction?

His figures put the focus on what he looks at, allude to the pleasure of looking, to the world of theater.

In this case the tourists become the spectators.

They are subjects facing the landscape as the protagonist of

What is reality and what is fiction?

His figures put the focus on what he looks at, allude to the pleasure of looking, to the world of theater.

In this case the tourists become the spectators.

They are subjects facing the landscape as the protagonist of

, by Caspar David Friedrich.

He was interested in architectural conflicts, representation, the image facing the object of it.

We are in the great moment of Italian semiotics and Ghirri embarks on this trend”.

Within the exhibition we also find the work of Fontcuberta himself, who photographed some of the

Just like in miniature Italy, it is on a plain and without any urban center around it.

Its Swiss predecessor is located in a valley.

So the mountainous background always ends up appearing in the images.

The fiction of the model is opposed to reality, establishing a game between fiction and representation.

There are eight projects carried out by ISIA students presented in the exhibition.

In

, Tommaso Veridis, following the tradition of 19th century photographers of inventorying heritage through photography, the author photographs the models.

The funny thing is that from time to time the author camouflages some authentic photograph from that century, challenging the viewer to discover his deception.

The video

made by Giacomo Ponasso, shows how the theme park has affected the most immediate environment, thus in a bucolic rural landscape emerges the Venetian Campanile.

One of the most curious initiatives launched by the organization offered tourists the possibility of obtaining a 3D photographic scan of themselves.

Of the two figures created in resin, one was kept by the visitor while the other had to remain in the enclosure for three years in the place preferred by the interested tourist, as part of a sociological analysis.

Rummaging through the archives of the park, Marta Gabellini portrayed her figures in her series

, a reflection on the multiple forms of identity that we adopt.

Italy in Miniature.

Florence.

Luigi Girri.

© ERED ArchiveLuigi Ghirri

Coinciding with the 30th anniversary of Ghirri's death, the MACK publishing house launches a beautiful monograph on the author,

, dedicated to the region located in the heel of Italy's boot.

Frequently visited by the author throughout the 1980s, he would take nearly 2,000 images, most of which have remained unpublished.

Edited by his daughter Adele Ghirri, the book is based on a model made by the artist in 1982 that never saw the light of day.

In it, the poetic narrative cadence of the author is evident, where powerful images coexist with other more silent ones, which invite pause, and others that suggest moments of transition.

All this necessary for the global understanding of it.

A method that the author described as close to literature but also to cinema.

“Just as there are key moments in the family album, made up of ceremonies, there are also less intense moments from day to day,

still represented because they document the passing of an existence.

I think it is possible to conceive of photography in these terms”, he wrote.

“They are images conceived to reinforce each other, or neutralize, contrast, so that the narrative is not boring and dull.

What I hate most are photography books with 200 pages, one after another, of the best images of a photographer.

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