Dead End

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Author: Nicola Moscelli
Publisher: Penisola Edizioni in collaboration with Antiga Edizioni
Editor: Steve Bisson
Graphic design and cartography: Roberto Vito D'Amico
Texts: Nicola Moscelli (essays), Maceo Montoya (foreword: "How to Transcend the Distance"), Miriam Ticktin (interview), and Steve Bisson (afterword: "Who Draws the Boundaries?")

Published in May 2024
1st edition, 500 copies
ISBN 978-88-84354-53-2

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360 pages
20 cm x 29.7 cm
Offset printing
Soft book cover with flaps
Swiss brochure binding with exposed spine
English language

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dead end: \ ‘ded-,end \ noun
1: an end of a road or passage from which no exit is possible
2: a situation that has no hope of making progress

“Dead End” is a visual investigation that intersects the past and present of the border between the United States and Mexico developed by Nicola Moscelli during the three years of the pandemic.

The leitmotif of the dead end, both physical and metaphorical, transcends the geographical boundary and weaves through the entire narrative, urging the reader to delve into the complex, innervated fabric of events and issues that the borderlands have witnessed since their inception.

Streetview imagery captured from both sides of the border reveals unfiltered scenes of stark beauty, harsh realities, and many roads ending abruptly. What they have in common is the aftertaste of an interrupted story, of suspended magic, of meaning lost in nothingness.

Through a meticulous research work, the author enriches these contemporary hyper-surveillance sceneries and old prints with quotes from ordinary people and historical figures, excerpts from government documents, interviews, social media, fragments of poems and song lyrics.

These pieces of evidence of the historical, cultural, and poetic dimensions of the borderlands are thus unearthed from nowness oblivion, forging an augmented reality to the aid of collective reflection.

The investigation opens up a method to relaunch the border as an interpretive, conceptual, and optical device: a “scopic” archaeology that uses images as fossils of social memory.

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Book photos by Luca Quagliato