‘Reality is being transformed into a colossal photograph and the photomontage already exists: it’s called the real world.’

Luigi Ghirri

Here, we see a pared-down room in a house outside of Modena, a region where Ghirri grew up and later spent time prowling antique stalls for props and taking photographs. The mysterious image invites the viewer to look for visual clues, peak further into the bedroom, observe the globe stopped on North America or read the large envelopes beside it.

Surveyor and cartographer turned photographer, Luigi Ghirri was a pivotal figure in the rise of colour photography in Europe in the 1970s. Fascinated by the tensions existing between the real world and its representations, Ghirri incorporated reproductions of reality – postcards, signs, posters and maps – in his work and played with mise-en-abyme, perspective, scale and superimposition of images to create a visual cartography of everyday life. Ghirri had his first retrospective outside of his native Italy at the Jeu de Paume, Paris (2019), and his first major UK exhibition will be at the Hayward Gallery, London (early 2021).