Spaces Corners at ICP Museum invites you to a book signing for 7439 by Renato D’Agostin on Thursday, August 4 from 6:30 to 8:30 pm.
About
No American roadtrip is so classic as the one bound west, especially from New York to California. That is the route Italy-born photographer Renato D'Agostin took in the summer of 2015 on his 1983 BMW motorcycle, cruising 7,439 miles coast-to-coast, riding through cities and nature, developing film at night in motel sinks along the way. In 7439 D’Agostin invites us into a new look of the traditional coast-to-coast trip with the traits that have been distinguishing his photographic work through the years. Absorbing the viewer in dense blacks D’Agostin’s grainy photographs feel both high speed and mysterious. From the stunning proportions of Niagara Falls facing tourists in their pilgrimage to hear the roar of nature, to a solitary car driving towards the very last ray of light in the South, to the infinite layers of Earth’s evolutionary history of the American West, 7439 chronologically takes us into D’Agostin’s United States. “Everything changes,” he says. “It is hard to believe it is the same country from north to south, east to west. It keeps surprising you.” But he found patterns. The headlamp on his bike mimicked the full moon above. The roads, rivers, and rocket launch contrails—even the Coca-Cola cursive appeared like ribbon. What you see in this series are hints of a larger picture. He says, “Everything doesn't have to be photographed in the same way to be remembered.”
A poster with geographical captions is included in the book. A limited edition vinyl disc with original music by Lorenzo Mason will also be available. Inspired by “Born To Be Wild,” the iconic American song is here electronically revisited, slowed down, simplified to a few recurring notes. A recording of D'Agostin's voice performing letters from the radio station names of the states he rode through with the motorcycle during the trip makes it a psychedelic sound with which experiencing the visual journey. The design of the vinyl and slipcase is based on the Coca-Cola sign, an image from the book, suggesting a spinning musical track or the itinerary of the trip.
7439 by Renato D’ Agostin
120 pages
66 black-and-white illustrations, 9.5 x 13 inches
Published by Nomadic Editions, 2016
$60
7439 (Coca-Cola sign image) 7” vinyl disc
Music by Lorenzo Mason
Voice by Renato D’Agostin
$30
To preorder a signed copy of 7439, visit Spaces Corners.
Bio
Renato D’Agostin was born in 1983. He started his career in photography in Venice, Italy. In 2005 he moved overseas exploring photography in New York. In the dynamic city life he had the chance to meet photographer Ralph Gibson and later on become his assistant. D’Agostin's works have been published in numerous books and exhibited in several exhibitions internationally. Some of his prints have in the years become part of public collections such as the Library of Congress and the Phillips Collection in Washington DC, as well as the Center for Creative Photography in Arizona and the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris among others. Dislocating subjects from their realities, he depicts his perception of the space around him, the relationship between the architecture and people, opening a new portal in the spectator’s imagination.
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