Luigi Ghirri: Urban Jungles and Potted Plants

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 explores the tension between nature and culture in the unsettlingly-still microcosm of northern Italian suburbia.