LUIGI GHIRRI. LEZIONI DI FOTOGRAFIA
Progetto esercizi e variazioni. Luca Capuano e Stefano Graziani
Curated by Ilaria Campioli
Promoted by Comune di Reggio Emilia (Musei Civici, Biblioteca Panizzi)
In collaboration with Fondazione Luigi Ghirri, ISIA Urbino, Liceo Artistico “Gaetano Chierici” di Reggio Emilia
• opening: Thursday 24 April h 19.30
Between 1989 and 1990, Luigi Ghirri held a series of photography lessons at the Università del Progetto in Reggio Emilia. Rather than focusing on the technical aspects of the medium, these lectures became an opportunity for Ghirri to revisit his own work, explore key themes, and delve into the broader history of photography—placing it within the wider context of image history. In 2010, Paolo Barbaro and Giulio Bizzarri compiled these lessons into a book published by Quodlibet, which soon became an essential entry point into Ghirri’s work as well as a reference for new generations of artists.
This exhibition seeks to revisit Ghirri’s lessons from a new perspective, involving artists Luca Capuano and Stefano Graziani, alongside a group of students from ISIA Urbino. It offers a space to reflect on the intentions and poetics behind the exercises presented in Lezioni di fotografia and, more broadly, on their practice and significance.
At the same time, the exhibition also examines the role of photography as a teaching tool. Since its invention, photography has been a privileged medium for the instruction of numerous disciplines, particularly in the arts. In the educational field—where reproduction and transcription are central processes—photography reveals what Monica Maffioli defines as its “double life”, highlighting its authorial, material, ambiguous, and unsettling nature.
