What remains of the American legend? Photographic book by Antonio de Bella of the United States – Corriere.it

It’s August 6th, 1945. An American B-29 bomber drops the first atomic bomb in history on a Japanese city Hiroshima. A gigantic mushroom of gas, dust, and fine matter rises into the sky. Or: it is on September 11, 2001. The Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda is launching coordinated attacks by hijacking four planes, two of which crash into the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center in New York. And again: a cross is burning in the disguised circle of Ku Klux Klan (1948); An angry crowd welcomes the candidate Richard Nixon During the Michigan election campaign (1972). but also: James DeanOpen Shirt, Cigarette in Mouth, on the set of Colossus (1973); Marlin Monroe On a New York Skyscraper (1955). Elvis Presley, Louis Armstrong, then Tommy Smith and John Carlos On the podium with a raised fist at the Olympic Games in Mexico City (1968). Woodstock Festival (1969), Attack on the Capitol (2021).

From news to cinema to civil rights, American history and its heroes have always been a part of ours, too. Each fact mentioned has an image that all of us, or almost all of us, are aware of and feel part of our cultural baggage. in a United State (Mondadori), Anthony Dibellaformer press director opinion 3 And the Rai news 24a three-time New York-based Rai correspondent and recently appointed Director of Rai Insights, Through extraordinary imagery of the American legend, he reconstructs a journey spanning two hundred and fifty years: «A multifaceted and complex story, sometimes epic, consisting of struggles and conquests. But with clarity, the author also highlights the many contradictions of the American adventure, ”says the introduction. The deep, sometimes devastating contradictions–such as the belated recognition of civil rights for blacks and Native Americans, the massacres in schools, the use of guns, and the violence of far-right extremists–that Amplification of shadows that until a few decades ago would have seemed mere lights. Di Bella wonders if the country that has remained the leader of the Western world to this day can still play this role: what is left of the legend?