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Reality is not the point of departure for Guidi but the destination he strives to reach. He works not so much on an idea of the spirit of a place as the spirit in a place. Like Baudelaire’s flâneur, the photographer is a wanderer, who strolls around the city as if it were a postmodern forest, observing the cracks of history and the traces of contemporary life, focusing on the signs of a fragmentary, polymorphous landscape. These images allow him to read — recount, interpret, explore, experience — Milan like a human body (at times desirable, at times standoffish, at times repugnant).
When I pick up a written book, escapism comes from the overlap between the narrator and myself. It’s an act of observation, critique, connection and, ultimately, of submission. How much do I identify with the voice? Have I been subsumed or am I intact? When the book is one of pictures, the escapism is more like walking through a mirror and ending up in another world. I am always only myself, but I am in another place or world, another time period, or a different dream. I am seeing through the artist’s eyes, but I have been transported, not subsumed.
I spent my childhood summers at my father’s farm outside Buenos Aires. After the long highway drive and the dusty dirt road, as soon as we arrived, I would run to the front of the car and begin the delicate process of unsticking the crushed butterflies from the still hot radiator. Most of them would be terminal, but one or two would cling to my finger, slowly regain center, and eventually fly away, always leaving behind some dust from their wings.
I curated myself with Peter Hujar; a risky act, but it was an invitation (from Galerie Buchholz, Berlin) I could not resist. I began by listing categories of images I wanted to see: animals, water, young men, body parts, NYC, babies. I’ve long been familiar with Hujar’s work and chose images I knew I could be in conversation with, but I also tried as much as possible to select from amongst his lesser-known works, in particular ones that have rarely, if ever been shown.
Sitting here at my desk, in another country, another time, I feel inadequate to the task of writing about the politics of 1980s Britain. Besides the passing of nearly four decades, I am not a deeply political animal, nor an ardent activist, as some admirable people are. In 1984 I was young and naive, idealist in some respects, unworldly in many others — neither inherently bad things, and quite possibly useful in an artist — but I have not studied history or economics or politics, so all I can do is write about what I saw and learned as someone who passed through these times.
My life was so much tamer than that of Nan Goldin’s group of friends, but I identified with the hunger for love, connection, community and freedom, and I still do, though now when I go back to it, it’s twinged with nostalgia and longing for what was and what wasn’t. I lived in Argentina at the time, so I didn’t get a chance to see the slideshow until much later, but that was fine. The small softcover book did the job, and it survived the million times I’ve looked at it.