The Collection Il Racconto Del Nostro Presente (“The Story of our Present”) comprises photographic works by three leading exponents of the Italian school of landscape: Luigi Ghirri (Scandiano, 1943 – Roncocesi, 1992), the important figure of an artist and intellectual who had a great influence on the climate of Italian photography in the seventies and eighties; Gabriele Basilico (Milan, 1944 – 2013), a documentary photographer whose reputation reaches well beyond the boundaries of Italy; and George Tatge (Istanbul, 1951), a sensitive and able narrator of the natural and anthropized landscape of Italy.
The photographs were commissioned by the Commune of San Casciano in Val of Pesa, a small town immersed in the beauty of the Tuscan countryside, in line with an Italian tradition that in the eighties and nineties saw many public bodies, often at the prompting of the photographers themselves, giving assignments for the interpretation of the territory to individuals and very often to groups. In this Tuscan project a confrontation between photography and writing brought contributions from the writers Giuliano Scabia, Giorgio Van Straten and Gianni Celati as well. The latter had already been involved in the 1984 project Viaggio in Italia, conceived by Ghirri.
Together, the photographs and writings compose an account of the Tuscan landscape and the society that inhabits the place, often characterized by poetic accents but respecting the needs of documentation. The project is documented in the book Il racconto del nostr presente, edited by S. De Martin, photographs by G. Basilico, L. Ghirri, G. Tatge, writings by G. Celati, G. Scabia, G. van Straten, (Florence: Alinari, 1989).
Property of the Municipality of San Casciano in Val di Pesa (Florence) , entrusted to the Museum of Contemporary Photography
Contents 106 prints
Dating of works 1989
Authors Gabriele Basilico, Luigi Ghirri, George Tatge
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