LONDON.- Perhaps his most exquisite exhibition to date, Guido Guidi’s seventh show at the gallery "A casa" focuses on the famed Italian photographer's home in Ronta, near Cesena. Purchased by Guidi’s father in the 1950s, this house is both a living space and a studio, as well as a meeting place for emerging artists – a space where personal memories and artistic process intertwine, and where his archive is housed.

The artist photographer and bookmaker John Gossage has been a long time friend of Guidi’s. The two have been on many photographic journeys together and for "A casa", he has made a small sequence of six books, acknowledging the gift of friendship, featuring photographs taken on visits to Guidi’s house, a homage to a fellow artist.

In late October, journalist Bartolomeo Sala travelled to Guido Guidi’s home to ask him about this place that looms large in his life as well as his approach to photography. An excerpt of their conversation here:

Bartolomeo Sala: Where does this love of the vernacular come from, be it the mundane architecture you are most known for or the humble agricultural tools that are included in 'A casa'?

Guido Guidi: Vernacular is a theme I have cultivated since I was an architecture student in Venice, perhaps under the influence of [architecture historian] Bruno Zevi, who would tell us about Frank Lloyd Wright and organic architecture, especially organic architecture.

He would also tell us about American vernacular architecture, Victorian houses made of wood and stone found nearby, whatever was at hand. Also, the kind of photography that we would normally call "spontaneous" or "snapshot", Americans call it vernacular.

The places I photograph are of course contaminated by the arrival of modernity which, with great pain, erases the vernacular. Be as it may, the vernacular is a place that I enjoy and feel calm in, a place where no one is around to bust my balls and say, you can’t take pictures here. I am fine with taking a picture of a place wherever, whether it’s in a city or a factory. The real problem for me is to have the right light which to some extent transfigures what I am photographing.

Bartolomeo Sala is an Italian journalist and editor based in London. His writing has appeared in the Financial Times Weekend Magazine, the Sunday Times, and The New Statesman and he is a regular contributor to Jacobin, and the Brooklyn Rail.

Guido Guidi (b. 1941, Cesena) is one of Italy’s most respected photographers, with a career spanning more than five decades. He has mostly focused his lens on rural and suburban geographies close to his home. Guidi has produced over 30 monographs to date, including the recently published "Col tempo, 1956–2024" (MACK), accompanying a comprehensive retrospective currently touring Europe, from the MAXXI, Rome to LE BAL, Paris.

Guidi’s photographs are part of International public collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and Centre Pompidou, Paris; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin and ICCD in Rome; Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.