Grainy America

Since his first trips to the United States in 1994, Nicola Vigilanti has tried to understand this society and aims to scrape the veneer to discover how the one that remains “the land of all opportunities” has failed in its promises, how these men and women grow, despite everything, on this foundation made of contradictions. In 2022, back in the US, and during a month-long journey, Nicola visited no less than ten very different states, meeting the people who inhabit them, from Illinois to California. Road trip to the heart of fantasy. The photographer looks at American society and observes it through the prism of its founding values. What is the status of welcome and hospitality today in this multicultural territory? Nicola Vigilanti returns to the unsaid, the silences and the twists and turns of History. It is a journey towards the Other, so distant and yet so close and an introspection. This dual approach results in a unique document on today's America seen by a contemporary photographer who is as passionate as he is critical. The photographer directs our eyes towards this “grainy” America, with its definition blurred. Thanks to the photographic language, Grainy America highlights all the contradictions of a country still subject to its own myth, where the victims are those who speak about it best. These black and white and sometimes color photographs, mostly in film, give voice again to the silent witnesses of this endearing America that Nicola Vigilanti would like to help change.

Catherine Raspail