Luigi Ghirri, one of the undisputed pioneers of Italian photography, passed away thirty years ago. Meticulously composed and deliberately dead-pan, Ghirri’s images of plants reinvent the history of botanical representation through the photographic lens. A far cry from Karl Blossfeldt’s iconic portraits of plants and the sublimity of Ansel Adam’s American wildscapes, Ghirri’s visual commentary explore the tension between nature and culture in the unsettlingly still microcosm of north Italian suburbia.
On this topic, the Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago is presenting a lecture by Dr. Giovanni Aloi. The conference, which is entitled “Le Voci della Natura: Ecologies and Nature in Italian Arts“, will be held on March 31. This is a hybrid event, with the option of participating both in-person and online.
Dr. Giovanni Aloi is an author, educator, and curator specializing in the representation of nature in art. He has published with Columbia University Press, Phaidon, MIT, Laurence King, and Prestel. He has contributed to BBC radio programs, worked at Whitechapel Art Gallery and Tate Galleries in London. Aloi has curated exhibitions in the US and Europe. He currently teaches modern and contemporary art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Sotheby’s Institute of Art New York and London.
For more information, go to iicchicago.esteri.it