Horizonville

Exploring by moped, Yann Gross slows down time to develop an ethnographic study of a
group of people living out their dreams. Recreating a world of American culture in a Swiss
valley only makes sense if it entails inventing a new cultural identity that forges a bond
between people in that community. The social component of these practices goes way
beyond leisure to create a new model of everyday life. It is the construction of a collective
fantasy world in reality. As Slavoj Zizek puts it, “Welcome to the desert of the real!”

Here an artificial universe based on imaginary notions from film and television has been
adapted to the everyday reality of a part of Switzerland very far removed from the Rocky
Mountains of the Wild West, but also very far removed from any reality of life in America.

The different events and gatherings that cement the bonds between all these people who gird
themselves with symbols of the American Dream lend it the force of reality. It is certainly less
about recreating a piece of America in part of the Rhône Valley than about creating a new
culture, new practices and identities, fusing Swiss realities with the imaginary American Way
of Life à la Hollywood.

Yann Gross does not attempt to explain this singular sociocultural phenomenon, much less
judge or even mock it. He takes a highly empathetic, humanly intelligent approach. Like the
character in David Lynch’s film The Straight Story who travels across the vast spaces of
America by mini tractor, he slows the pace of his perception in exploring the valley by
moped, towing a trailer that allows him to camp wherever he sets up his tripod. This patient
and genuinely curious approach means that he is accepted by the people who are the
subject of his photographic investigation. The trust he elicits enables him to develop several
different complementary modes of representation, from posed portraits to snapshots of the
rites and festivals where the tribe assembles.

Landscape photographs revealing the
architectural impact of this dissemination of the American Dream along the roadside against
the backdrop of the Alps reinforce the calm strangeness of this mingling of two worlds.

Yann Gross’s story is about people at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In the wake of
globalization, thanks to contact facilitated by high-tech communication between far-flung
cultures, human communities are inventing new identities and practices that help create a
cheerful patchwork of creolization.

© Yann Gross / Introduction by Pascal Beausse