Luigi Ghirri e Gianni Celati. Verso la foce at MAMbo

The exhibition explores the creative collaboration between photographer Luigi Ghirri and writer and filmmaker Gianni Celati through their shared attention to landscape, memory, and everyday places.

Overview

Presented at the MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, Luigi Ghirri e Gianni Celati. Verso la foce traces one of the most significant collaborations between Italian photography and literature. Curated by Lorenzo Balbi and Giulia Pezzoli, the exhibition focuses on the intellectual and creative relationship between Luigi Ghirri and Gianni Celati, united by a shared attention to landscape, everyday life, and overlooked places.

At the centre of the exhibition is a large body of photographs made by Ghirri between 1989 and 1991 during the research and production of Strada Provinciale delle Anime, Celati’s first feature film. The project developed from the exploration of the Po Valley landscape initiated through Celati’s acclaimed book Verso la foce (1989), following journeys through a territory shaped by memory, human presence, and transformation.

During these years of collaboration, Ghirri’s camera accompanied Celati’s cinematic investigation, documenting the making of the film while gradually shifting attention towards the human figure and the relationship between people and their surroundings. The exhibition reveals how photography and cinema became intertwined forms of observation, creating a shared language built around wandering, listening, and looking closely at the ordinary.

The exhibition is accompanied by a publication exploring the artistic approaches of both authors through essays by Corrado Confalonieri, Gabriele Gimmelli, and Marco Sironi. The project is supported by Strategia Fotografia 2025 and realized in partnership with Fondazione Luigi Ghirri.

About The Artist

Luigi Ghirri (1943–1992) was one of the most influential Italian photographers of the twentieth century. Growing up in Emilia-Romagna, he developed a poetic and conceptual approach to photography, informed by art, cinema, and photographers such as Eugène Atget, Walker Evans, and William Eggleston. Through images of everyday landscapes, signs, maps, and overlooked details, Ghirri explored the relationship between reality and representation, becoming a pioneer of colour photography in Italy.

Gianni Celati (1937–2022) was an Italian writer, translator, literary critic, and filmmaker whose work explored the relationship between storytelling, landscape, and lived experience. Through novels, essays, and films, Celati developed a unique approach based on observation, wandering, and attention to marginal spaces and everyday voices. His 1989 book Verso la foce, an exploration of the Po River landscape, became a key reference point for his artistic research and later informed his collaboration with Ghirri. Together, Ghirri and Celati created a shared vision of the Italian landscape as a place of memory, transformation, and human presence.