Jerome de Perlinghi: Fading, American History For Sale
© Jerome de Perlinghi
Fading, American History For Sale
This project started in the early eighties. In 1981, I made my first trip to the USA with two friends, we were 20 years old and hitchhiking through the Western States. It is here between Fresno and LA, that I got my first taste of road photography.
It all became a more serious approach in 1983 on my second visit to New York as I truly started to record the fading stories of the American Society. Right away, I knew that this project would involve signs, bricks, cars, storefronts, shadows and lights but no humans, it would be about the changing scenery of America.
What is really striking in this society, is how fast the decorum does change or how streets and whole neighborhoods are abandoned. Even in major cities, the city center or Downtown just shifts away leaving dead zones in what should be lovely living spaces think Detroit or Youngstown. The full title of the portfolio came from a photograph shot on Milwaukee Avenue, in Chicago, in the middle of the nineties, where a cart inside an abandoned storefront said “American History For Sale”.
Over a period of 25 years, I photographed these photographs in every corner of every State. I am asking questions on why does life disappear so fast? The right balance in a perfect world would be to keep the best moments of the past while building the future. But in this portfolio, humans have mostly left or changed the scenery beyond repair. Like an archeologist searching for old tombs, I find treasures or relics from a recent past.
It is a visual statement about the American Society. The American People always believe that the future will always be brighter, but when you forget to cherish your roots, your own history and your past, you start losing your identity. You are fading away, as you sell your own history.
© Jerome De Perlinghi
January 2018
About Jerome de Perlinghi
Jerome de Perlinghi was born in 1961 in Brussela, Belgium. Since 2010, teaching photojournalism at Loyola University, School of Communication at the Water Tower Campus in Chicago. His work has been published in a range of books including “Memphis” A Crossroads of Music published in the fall of 2005, ed. Le Chêne, Paris, “Shanghai”, from 1985 to 2000 a document on the “ Pearl of the East”, ed. Catleya, Paris, France 2000.
His work has been exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery, Washing DC (USA), Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York (USA), Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, (France), Museum of Photography, Antwerp (Belgium) and National Portrait Gallery, London (England)
He is the artistic director and principal organizer of the Photography Festival “Eyes on Main Street” in Wilson, North Carolina.
Website: Eyes on Main Street