For the first time in the United States, 18 photographs from Francesco Jodice’s WEST project are being presented. The project aims to encourage critical reflection on the rise and fall of the last great Western empire, spanning from the beginning of the Gold Rush (1848) to the collapse of Lehman Brothers (2008). The project was realised with the support of the Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture.
The WEST exhibition (open until 30 November 2025) is organised by the Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco and promoted by the Consulate General of Italy in San Francisco, MUNAF – National Museum of Photography of Cinisello Balsamo, and INNOVIT (Italian Innovation and Culture Hub).
Over three extensive journeys carried out between 2014 and 2022 in one of the world’s oldest geological formations, Francesco Jodice reinterprets a significant part of our history through a visual repertoire of myths and ruins, utopias, mirages, and failures. California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Nebraska, and Texas, including contiguous areas of Mexico, are among the states where the Gold Rush took place. These territories were traversed by Jodice for his WEST research project: the core of the work lies at the intersection of the region’s distinctive geology and the archaeological ruins (mines, ghost towns, abandoned complexes and infrastructures) of a period driven by an unstoppable desire for immediate wealth.
In a visual temporality that appears to merge past, present, and future, Jodice’s photographic works evoke the Western journey, integrating economy, territory, politics, and the culture of the “American century” as a synecdoche of the West. In the era of post-truth, reinterpretation, and revisionism, WEST offers an alternative history of power and culture in the globally considered West – encompassing not only the United States but a dimension that concerns us all. Simultaneously, WEST immerses the viewer in a visionary and unique history: that of the most powerful machine of imaginaries ever to exist.
The WEST artistic project was supported by the Italian Council (10th edition, 2021), the Italian Ministry of Culture’s programme for the international promotion of Italian art. It was realised by MUNAF – National Museum of Photography, in collaboration with Galerie Le Château d’Eau (Toulouse, France) and Arc en Rêve Centre d’Architecture (Bordeaux, France).
