Wilted Country

Wilted Country collects Roger Eberhard's photographs of the abandoned towns of the American West

In the years following World War II, the National Highway System began to expand into the American West, improving trade and bringing with it tourists from the East Coast. Along these new thoroughfares grew several small communities hoping to cash in on this sudden influx. By century's end, however, many of these upstart communities had failed, and huge numbers of their residents had left in search of another livelihood.

But what happens to these communities when all the people have disappeared? In late 2008 Swiss-born and American-educated photographer Roger Eberhard (*1984) set out on a road trip to find out. With camera in tow, Eberhard journeyed from Reno to Montana, on to North and South Dakota, then south to Texas. Along the way he encounteredand captured on filmseveral remnants of a once bustling past, from toppled water towers and boarded-up businesses to abandoned homes hidden behind overgrown lawns. Eberhard's resulting images explore the enduring impact that humans have on their landscape and simultaneously offer an evocative tour through the past and present of the storied American West.

Wilted Country collects the best of Eberhard's images in a single volume and complements them with critical essays on the artist's craft by Anthony Bannon, the director of the George Eastman House and Benedict Wells, a young German novelist.

«A beautiful visual study, with evocative contributions by Bannon, and also the novelist Benedict Wells.» HotShoe International

Autorentext

Roger Eberhard, born 1984 in Zurich, graduated in photography from the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, CA, in 2007. He lives and works as free-lance photographic artist in Berlin and Zurich. Walter Keller lives and works as free-lance publicist in Zurich, where he also runs an art gallery. He was formerly publisher of Scalo publishers in Zurich and New York City. Benedict Wells, born 1984 in Munich, lives and works as a writer in Berlin. His highly acclaimed first novel 'Becks letzter Sommer' was published in 2008, his second, 'Spinner', in 2009 (Diogenes Verlag, Zurich, both in German).

Klappentext

Atmospheric images of a landscape deserted by mankind and recaptured by nature: an evocative tour through the past and present of the American West.