Luigi Ghirri
[Photographer, b. 1943, Scandiano, Italy, d. 1992, Reggio Emilia, Italy.]

 In photography, the deletion of the space that surrounds the framed image is as important as what is represented; it is thanks to this deletion that the image takes on meaning... inviting us to see the rest of reality that is not represented. 
 …photography always implies subtraction, or a sense of something missing, something outside the frame. 
 The meaning that I am trying to render through my work is a verification of how it is still possible to desire and face a path of knowledge, to be able finally to distinguish the precise identity of man, things, life, from the image of man, things, and life. 
 …the only journey now possible seems to be the one found inside signs and images—in a destruction of direct experience. 
 Any photographed human being is always a photograph. 
 Many people, when writing about photography say that it always shows what we already know—that which is common knowledge. I think this assertion should be corrected to say instead: photography always shows what we think we know. 
 The formal artistic gesture is already expressed in the act of taking the photograph. 
 The need to be original and creative at all costs, the desperate search for novelty and trademarks, in the belief that an artist may be recognized because he impresses his own visual editing on the outside world, is the biggest danger faced today by research and creative photography. (1985) 
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