Once upon a time in the West

'Once Upon a Time in the West' was photographed on the eroding sets and locations of Sergio Leone’s celebrated 1960’s ‘spaghetti Westerns’, deep in the Almerian deserts of southern Spain. For several years I have pursued work concerned with the propagation of American myths abroad. I recently became fascinated by the notion that a fundamental American archetype – the Wild West, and its associations with freedom, independence, rebelliousness, brutality, morality, honour and so on – had been transposed by an Italian film director onto the landscape of Franco’s Spain, and subsequently came to define this ‘quintessentially American’ genre in itself. Furthermore, I was particularly interested discovering what these remnants – flimsy, worn and weathered, but still standing forty years on – might insinuate about the state of contemporary America, along with its ideals, reputation, ambitions, visions and illusions today.