'American Eden' by Valerio Geraci (2024)
With Valerio Geraci, we traverse rural America, where the echoes of the Beat Generation spill onto the scorching asphalt alongside the remnants of the American Dream. The book features a selection of medium-format color images and diaries collected on the road by the Sicilian photographer since 2016. At the wheel, Geraci charts an intimate map of the United States, a fascination and longing nurtured since childhood through cinema, literature, and music, like so many visions of falling stars. It’s a repertoire of chance encounters, serene landscapes, provincial lyrics, and fragments of beauty captured on film.
And then there is Brady, a remote town in Nebraska, where Geraci turns off the engine and, over the years, forges a deep friendship with James and his family. American Eden is a guide to the marginal, hidden, ignored, nostalgic, yet still wondrous America. It is an ode to the journey and to the sunset as an endless horizon, as the lights fade on the great frontier.
The book includes essays by photography historian Rachel Sailor, critic and collector Dionisio Gavagnin, and curator Steve Bisson.
