GHIRRI, Luigi (Scandiano, 1943 - Reggio Emilia, 1992)Atlante

"The Atlas is the book, the place where all the signs of the earth, from natural to cultural, are conventionally represented: mountains, lakes, pyramids, oceans, cities, villages, stars, islands. In this totality of writing and description, we find the place where we live, where we would like to go, the path to follow [...].
In this work I wanted to make a journey in the place that instead cancels the journey itself, precisely because all possible journeys are already described and the routes are already traced [...] If OCEAN immediately refers us to infinite possible images that we possess mentally, as the writing disappears, meridians and parallels and numbers disappear, the landscape becomes "natural", it is no longer evoked, but unfolds before us, as if before our eyes a hand had replaced the book with a real landscape. (from Ghirri's text).