WEST
A photographic exhibition by Francesco Jodice
September 26 – November 30, 2025
Italian Cultural Institute @INNOVIT
710 Sansome Street, San Francisco
The photographic exhibition WEST by Francesco Jodice will be on view September 25 through November 30, 2025 at the Italian Cultural Institute San Francisco @INNOVIT (Italian Innovation and Culture Hub). The exhibition features 18 photographs presented for the first time in the United States.
The project invites us to a critical reflection on the rise and fall of the last great Western Empire, spanning the period from the start of the Gold Rush (1848) to the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers (2008).
The WEST project is realized thanks to the support of the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture.
The exhibition is organized by the Italian Cultural Institute San Francisco and promoted by the Consulate General of Italy in San Francisco, MUNAF – Museo Nazionale di Fotografia in Cinisello Balsamo (Milan), and INNOVIT (Italian Innovation and Culture Hub).
WEST, THE PHOTOGRAPHIC PROJECT
Through three extensive journeys, carried out between 2014 and 2022 across one of the planet’s oldest geological formations, Francesco Jodice revisits a significant chapter of our history through a visual repertoire of myths and ruins, utopias, mirages, and failures.
It is the archaeology of a present that has already passed. California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Nebraska, Texas, along with contiguous areas of Mexico, are among the territories where the Gold Rush unfolded. These landscapes were crossed by Francesco Jodice for his research project WEST: the core of the work lies at the intersection between the peculiar geology of this region and the archaeological ruins—mines, ghost towns, abandoned complexes and infrastructures—of an era driven by an irrepressible desire for immediate wealth.
In a visual temporality that seems to merge past, present, and future, Jodice’s photographic works evoke the westward journey by intertwining economy, landscape, politics, and culture of the “American century” as a synecdoche for the West. In the age of post-truth, reinterpretation, and revisionism, WEST offers an alternative narrative of power and culture in the West as a whole—not only the United States, but a dimension that concerns us all. At the same time, WEST immerses us in a visionary and perhaps unrepeatable story: that of the most powerful machinery of imaginaries ever to exist.
The artistic project WEST was supported by the Italian Council (10th edition, 2021), the international program for the promotion of Italian art of the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture. It was produced by MUNAF – Museo Nazionale di Fotografia, in collaboration with Galerie Le Château d’Eau (Toulouse, FR) and Arc en Rêve Centre d’Architecture (Bordeaux, FR).
FRANCESCO JODICE, THE ARTIST
Born in Naples in 1967, Francesco Jodice studied Architecture. He teaches at NABA – Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan. He is among the founders of the collectives Multiplicity and Zapruder.
His artistic research investigates the transformations of the contemporary social landscape, phenomena of urban anthropology, and new processes of participation. His projects aim to establish common ground between art and geopolitics, presenting artistic practice as a form of civic poetics.
Among his major works are the photographic atlas What We Want, an observatory on changes in the landscape as a projection of collective desires, and the film trilogy on new forms of urbanism Citytellers. Some of his recent projects – such as Atlante, American Recordings, West, and Revolutions – explore possible future scenarios for the West.
Among the venues and events in which he exhibited his works: Greek Film Archive (Athens); Podbielski Contemporary (Berlin); MAMbo (Bologna); Brussels Biennial (Brussels); QAGOMA – Queensland Art Gallery (Brisbane); Palazzo Strozzi (Florence); Galería Jesús Gallardo (León, Guanajuato); Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Guarene d’Alba); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Wifredo Lam (Havana); Tate Modern (London); Museo Nacional del Prado (Madrid); in Milan, Triennale and Palazzo Reale; Multimedia Art Museum (Moscow); Wales Museum (Mumbai); in Naples, Museo MADRE, Quadriennale and MANN – Museo Archeologico Nazionale; in New York, International Center of Photography, Whitebox Art Center, Pratt Manhattan Gallery; Maison Européenne de la Photographie (Paris); Museo della Grafica (Pisa); Museo d’Arte (Ravenna); Fotografia Europea (Reggio Emilia); in Rome, Palazzo Barberini, GNAM – Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, and Palazzo del Quirinale; Netherlands Architecture Institute (Rotterdam); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (Santiago de Chile); Bienal de São Paulo; Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art; Center for Contemporary Art (Tel Aviv); Rice Gallery/G2 (Tokyo); in Turin, Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Camera – Centro Italiano per la Fotografia, GAM, and Biennale Internazionale di Fotografia; in Venice, International Architecture Exhibition and International Art Exhibition – La Biennale; Biennale Yinchuan, MOCA – Museum of Contemporary Art (Yinchuan); Fotomuseum (Winterthur); Museum of Contemporary Art (Zagreb).