Modena (2), 1971

The numerous works by Ghirri in the CRT Collection include one that depicts a glass snow globe containing a model of Piazza San Marco, seen from the Grand Canal, the same way that travelers arriving there once saw it for the first time, entirely reflected in the expanse of the lagoon’s waters. This work is a door that opens between an “interior” and an “exterior” of the city, to use terms favored by Ghirri, which perhaps could best symbolize the idea of horizon and landscape, in the way he intended when he wrote that taking photographs signifies finding oneself at the boundary between the known and the unknown, which is not a question of a gesture of melancholic nostalgia, but the beginning of a voyage toward an unknown territory. [...]