L'amico infinito

Claude Nori, a longtime friend of Luigi Ghirri and who published all his books in France, draws a lively, intimate, free and very moving portrait of this great photographer through their travels, their exchanges on technique and prints, their discussions on neorealist cinema, the great currents and works that marked the history of photography. Composed in chapters that are all small anecdotes of shared moments, the book recreates the atmosphere of these years of rupture and renewal to understand the thought and work of Ghirri: the design of the book Kodachrome, the conference at the Sorbonne in 1985, Bob Dylan, Lucio Dalla, Walker Evans ... This portrait, unlike all theoretical clichés, reveals a Luigi Ghirri, funny, moving, who seemed to have found “an extraordinary balance between the malaise of existence and the well-being of the gaze”.

The book, published in coedition with Éditions Contrejour, is supplemented by interviews, plural interventions such as those of Jean-Claude Lemagny, Michel Nuridsany, texts by Luigi Ghirri and unpublished remembrance photos by Claude Nori. A selection of about sixtheen photographs by Luigi Ghirri accompanies this essay, allowing one to have a global and critical vision of his work.