Guido Guidi

Guido Guidi (born December 26, 1940) is an Italian photographer. His work, spanning over more than 40 years, has focused in particular on rural and suburban geographies in Italy and Europe. He photographs places that are normally overlooked. His published works include In Between Cities, Guardando a Est, A New Map of Italy and Veramente.

Life and work

Guidi was born in Cesena, Italy. He enrolled in 1959 at IUAV and then at the School of Advanced Studies in Industrial Design in Venice. He followed, among other courses, the ones offered by Bruno Zevi, Carlo Scarpa, Luigi Veronesi, and Italo Zannier.

He started taking pictures in 1956 and continuously in 1966. Since 1989 he has taught Photography at Accademia di Belle Arti in Ravenna and he is part of the scientific committee for the project "Linea di Confine" (Rubiera, RE). Since 2001 he has taught at the IUAV Design e Art faculty in Venice.

His later publications include Per Strada; A New Map of Italy; and Carlo Scarpa's Tomba Brion. He has shown his work at the Guggenheim and Whitney museums in New York, at Centre Pompidou in Paris, at the Venice Biennial and at Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montréal. His work is held in the collections of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, of the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montréal, of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and of the Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris.

Guidi began experimenting in the late 1960s with pseudo-documentary images that interrogated photography's objectivity. Influenced by neorealist film and conceptual art, in the 1970s he began investigating Italy's man-altered landscape. Working in marginal and decayed spaces with an 8×10 large format camera, he creates dense sequences intended as meditations on the meaning of landscape, photography, and seeing. Later he investigated the life and death of modernist architecture, with projects on Scarpa, van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier. Photography for Guidi is something autobiographical. It is synonymous with inhabiting, and the camera is the instrument that allows him to observe, appropriate and collect what lies beyond his doorstep.

"Guidi was a leading voice in the resurgence of Italian photography of the 1970s and 1980s".

Exhibitions with contributions by Guidi Carlo Scarpa, Architect: Intervening with History, Canadian Centre for Architecture, 1999. An exhibition of Scarpa's work, with new photographs commissioned by the CCA from Guidi regarding Scarpa's projects.

Group exhibitions Arrivals, Canadian Centre for Architecture, 2008. Works by Dieter Appelt, Robert Burley, Edward Burtynsky, Giovanni Chiaramonte, Thomas Florschuetz, John Gossage, Guidi, Gordon Matta-Clark, Alain Paiement, Irene Whittome, Richard Henriquez, Philippe Lupien, Jacques Rousseau, and Tadao Ando. 32 Italian Photographers: A Tribute to Phyllis Lambert, Canadian Centre for Architecture, 1999. Works by Andrea Abati, Cesare Ballardini, Marina Ballo Charmet, Olivo Barbieri, Gabriele Basilico, Nunzio Battaglia, Giannantonio Battistella, Roberto Bossaglia, Luca Campigotto, Vincenzo Castella, Alessandra Chemollo, Giovanni Chiaramonte, Mario Cresci, Paola de Pietri, Vittore Fossati, Moreno Gentili, Luigi Ghirri, Paolo Gioli, William Guerrieri, Guidi, Mimmo Jodice, Martino Marangoni, Walter Niedermayr, Fulvio Orsenigo, Francesco Radino, Gloria Salvatori, George Tatge, Franco Vaccari, Fulvio Ventura, Silvio Wolf, Giovanni Zaffagnini, and Marco Zanta. Photography and Transformations of the Contemporary City: Venezia – Marghera, Canadian Centre for Architecture, 1999. Works by Marina Ballo Charmet, Olivo Barbieri, Gabriele Basilico, Gianantonio Battistella, Luca Campigotto, Vincenzo Castella, Alessandra Chemollo, Giovanni Chiaramonte, Paola De Pietri, William Guerrieri, Guidi, Mimmo Jodice, Walter Niedermayr, Fulvio Orsenigo, and Marco Zanta. Ways of Seeing: Cesare Fabbri, Peter Fraser, Marcello Galvani, Guidi, Large Glass, Photo London, 2017. Works by Guidi, Peter Fraser, Cesare Fabbri and Marcello Galvani.