Di sguincio, 1969–81
Guido Guidi
Di sguincio 1969–81, presents work Guido Guidi made between the ages of 28 and 40. The title means “aslant” or “from the corner of the eye,” which speaks to the work on multiple accounts.
For one, the book is very much a slantwise curation of Guido’s vision. This is work made during a long exploratory period before Guidi landed on the formal style he is known for: evenly composed color shots on large format film. Di sguincio is entirely black and white snapshots, catching spontaneous moments at home and with friends. In some photographs, Guido plays with light and double exposure, expressing a playfulness that is not as pronounced in his more mature style.
The shots also appear to capture moments “from the corner of the eye” — casual, unframed glimpses of life. If Guido finds the commonplace in neglected spaces within Italian suburbia, as expressed in Veramente, then in this body of work, the commonplace is found in everyday gestures expressed by friends and family. The book is full of disembodied limbs and hands, and smiles framed askew and separated from the rest of the face. In the spirit of Harry Callahan and Lee Friedlander, Guido doesn’t hold his eye to the viewfinder and instead relies on chance: “I took [the photographs] joyfully, playfully, certainly not to spite the person, but to look for alternative angles to those of academic photography.”
As a sucker for material, there is the bonus that the photographs are reproduced on the pages as the original darkroom prints. We see the sloppy borders, white margins, and Guidi’s notes and annotations: all evidence of the long period in which the artist was coming into his own.
For one, the book is very much a slantwise curation of Guido’s vision. This is work made during a long exploratory period before Guidi landed on the formal style he is known for: evenly composed color shots on large format film. Di sguincio is entirely black and white snapshots, catching spontaneous moments at home and with friends. In some photographs, Guido plays with light and double exposure, expressing a playfulness that is not as pronounced in his more mature style.
The shots also appear to capture moments “from the corner of the eye” — casual, unframed glimpses of life. If Guido finds the commonplace in neglected spaces within Italian suburbia, as expressed in Veramente, then in this body of work, the commonplace is found in everyday gestures expressed by friends and family. The book is full of disembodied limbs and hands, and smiles framed askew and separated from the rest of the face. In the spirit of Harry Callahan and Lee Friedlander, Guido doesn’t hold his eye to the viewfinder and instead relies on chance: “I took [the photographs] joyfully, playfully, certainly not to spite the person, but to look for alternative angles to those of academic photography.”
As a sucker for material, there is the bonus that the photographs are reproduced on the pages as the original darkroom prints. We see the sloppy borders, white margins, and Guidi’s notes and annotations: all evidence of the long period in which the artist was coming into his own.
