Viaggio In Italia at IIC in Paris

The exhibition project is organized on the occasion of Paris Photo, one of the most important international events dedicated to contemporary photography.

Overview

The General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture and MUFOCO – Museo di Fotografia Contemporanea, in collaboration with Archivio Eredi di Luigi Ghirri, present the exhibition Viaggio In Italia, curated by Matteo Balduzzi.

Exhibited photographers are Olivo Barbieri, Gabriele Basilico, Giannantonio Battistella, Vincenzo Castella, Andrea Cavazzuti, Giovanni Chiaramonte, Mario Cresci, Vittore Fossati, Carlo Garzia, Luigi Ghirri, Guido Guidi, Shelley Hill, Mimmo Jodice, Gianni Leone, Claude Nori, Umberto Sartorello, Mario Tinelli, Ernesto Tuliozi, Fulvio Ventura, Cuchi White.

The exhibition celebrates the fortieth anniversary of Viaggio In Italia, the photographic project conceived by Luigi Ghirri in 1984, considered a milestone in the history of contemporary Italian photography that offered an alternative representation of our country, and presents the 86 images contained in the original catalog, reprinted in a facsimile edition for this celebratory occasion.

During the inauguration, that will take place on Thursday 7th November, 6pm, after the institutional greetings and speeches, the documentary Viaggio In Italia. I Fotografi Vent'Anni Dopo by Maurizio Magri, produced in 2004 by Emmestudio on the twentieth anniversary of the project, will be screened in its entirety. The documentary involved most of the original protagonists who, as Gabriele Basilico states in the film, were all united by the urgent "need to discover a normality of things, anti-heroic, anti-mythical, everyday and not rhetorical."

A complementary element to the exhibition for the fortieth anniversary of the photographic project is the facsimile reprint of the original catalog Viaggio In Italia (Il Quadrante, Alessandria 1984), edited by Luigi Ghirri, Gianni Leone, and Enzo Velati, designed by his wife Paola Borgonzoni, which includes an essay by Arturo Carlo Quintavalle and a text by Gianni Celati. This work is one of the most significant in both the history of contemporary photography and the artist's book. The volume, which contained a selection of 86 photographs from the over 300 in the historical exhibition, is republished in a facsimile edition by the publishing house Quodlibet and will be presented on Friday 8th November, 6pm at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris.