Something Out of Nothing

Since the 1970s, Guido Guidi has been making photographs of the world around him, venturing out – often not far – from his home amid the agricultural landscapes of north-eastern Italy. His mesmerising large-format images depict houses, barns, people, tools, mounds of rubble and dirty snow. These unmonumental subjects are pictured with care and precision, forming almost painterly images that also stubbornly show reality. As well as admiration, they can provoke baffl ement and consternation. They put pressure on the question of what photography is: of what it means to take pictures of the world. In this essay, writer Louis Rogers looks at Guido Guidi’s work to consider what it has to tell us about the habit of photography. Following the progression of Guidi’s practice from the stark black-and-white pictures of his youth to the large- format studies of place for which he is best known, it examines how this deeply photographic work is shaped by a surprising relationship with painting. It pursues allusions to early Renaissance religious art to analyse in material terms how Guidi balances the real and the symbolic, the exact and the mysterious. Drawing on philosophy, psychoanalysis, and literature, Something Out of Nothing offers an introduction to a wholly distinctive artist and a compelling new perspective on photography as an art form and a part of life.