The photographer and prompter, Michael Bofinger, traveled the United States multiple times between 2013 and 2017, using his car to traverse the most remote roads in the country in order to document the American reality through photography. The result is a collection of precise, stark black and white photographs that present a flat, mostly frontal representation of buildings, landscapes, and vistas of the American surface.
The images of his series „God´s own country“ depict the bleakness and likely the result of extreme neoliberalism in recent decades in a brutal way. Empty billboards, abandoned gas stations, dismal motels, lonely rest stops, and deserted parking lots all serve to make clear the surface that a neoliberal economic order produces.
A deeply inhumane, unjust and broken world.
Bofinger’s work can be viewed as a critical reflection on the societal and political conditions in the United States. His photographs do not depict the natural beauty of the country, but instead reveal the bleakness and abandonment that results from a decrease in investment in infrastructure and social services, ultimately caused by the actions of a few powerful and greedy individuals. They make it clear that the exclusive, brutal promotion of economic growth alone is not enough to create a justified, sustainable, content and peaceful society. Bofinger’s work can therefore also be understood as a call to society to engage with these issues and to initiate social change.
Since 2022, Bofinger has been exploring, often with a twinkle in his eye, the documentation of the development of artificial intelligence and the concrete effects of AI on art, society, economy and politics.
Yuval Noah Harari poses the exciting and decisive question that society must quickly answer: Who do we want to be in the future?