The wide allure, not only in Italy, that the work of Luigi Ghirri (1943–1992) today enjoys deserves and requires a wider contextual and critical interdisciplinary analysis in order to contribute to a more counterweighted interpretation of his work and its reception in Italy and abroad. If only for this reason, the edited collection by Marina Spunta e Jacopo Benci is very timely and adequate so as ‘ . . . to add depth to the critical and scholarly reflection on Ghirri, challenging some of the myths and misconceptions surrounding his work’, as the editors highlight in their introduction (p. xvii). The book has its roots in a three-year project Viewing and Writing Italian Landscape. Luigi Ghirri and His Legacy in Photography and Literature (2013–2015), which culminated in two conferences: the first held at the British School at Rome on 9 October 2013, ‘How to Think in Images? Luigi
Ghirri and Photography’, and a second, ‘“L’esperienza del luogo”: Italian Photography, Writing and Landscape. Luigi Ghirri, his Contemporaries, his Legacy’, held at the University of Leicester from 19 to 21 September 2014.
