04 - Giafranco Gorgoni, Spiral Jetty

Giafranco Gorgoni
Italian, b. 1941

Spiral Jetty
1970
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Driek and Michael Zirinsky in honor of Andrea Melnick and Ben Gunsberg, NEHMA
2019.8

 

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Gianfranco Gorgoni was born in Rome. He came to the United States early in his career. After befriending many famous American artists of the time, he began photographing them as they lived and worked on their creative pursuits. Gorgoni was later acknowledged for his photographs depicting land art of the 60's and 70's. Robert Smithson, the artist who created the Spiral Jetty land art piece in the Great Salt Lake, hired Gorgoni to photograph his finished work. This image was taken from a helicopter over the Great Salt Lake shortly after the completion of the work in 1970, and it captures the beauty of both the natural and manmade landscape.