Rooted in the mythology of the founding fathers, the recognition of the hero, the self-made man who started from nothing, celebrates the almighty strength of money and power. And in so doing, this society, whose institutions we were told guaranteed democracy, forgets to ask itself the real questions. Denial of its origins or cognitive bias? And what a paradox it is to see a country with some of the world’s best universities forgetting the very foundations of civilization.
But is it really a paradox? How can we believe that this American dream, amnesic of its origins, deregulated for decades, allows the most vulnerable to envisage their future in any other way than by reproducing unequal behaviors? An individual dream turns into a collective nightmare, destroying the bottom-up work implemented by urban citizens, artists and scientists dedicated to urban resilience.
In this series of six photographs, the symbols of a drifting society, ignorant of its own history and built on the exclusion of otherness confront the immigrants of Ellis Island, who dreamed of a better world.
Shooting place: New York City, USA.
Print size: A3, (11,7 x 16,5 inch) ephemerally framed with argentic paper.
