Standing Still

  • Filippo Bardazzi

For a long time the Far West has been the destination of adventurers, loners and pioneers moved either by vocation or by need. For these people the unexplored territories beyond the frontier represented a real step forward towards freedom and, possibly, glory. This unusual embrace between civilization and a wild, magnificent, but sometimes also inhospitable and violent, nature originated the American man. At the end of a dynamic and impetuous historical phase, the Far West played a key role not only in the geographical definition of the U.S., but also in the creation of an epic (as well as a political doctrine of expansion) that became the cultural cornerstone for the growing country. It is no coincidence that the Western epic experienced its greatest glory in the twentieth century when the U.S.A. emerged as the dominant world power. Today immobility and stillness distinguish the condition of the contemporary West. Although some environmental and cultural changes have impacted the region, they have been unable to free this land from its famous iconography and the history it stands for. A myth that affects an environment so deeply can only become its constant aspect, doomed continually to repeat itself.