J. Bennett Fitts, Salton Sea, 2003-05 (Courtesy of the artist and Julie Saul Gallery; © J. Bennett Fitts)

POUGHKEEPSIE, NY.- “Utopia” is the notion of an ideal society – a peaceful, harmonious place or community where social contradictions are annulled in a collective dream. There are utopias of the past, utopias of the present, and imagined utopias of the future. But what has come of our dreams of utopia in the twenty-first century?
The artists featured in Utopian Mirage: Social Metaphors in Contemporary Photography and Film reconsider these dreams – with some surprising results. "They discover that our utopian ideals have often been overtaken by the realities of urban decay, corruption, loss of innocence, disregard for natural resources, and nature’s chaotic cycles," said Mary-Kay Lombino, the Art Center's Emily Hargroves Fisher ’57 and Richard B. Fisher Curator. "The utopian impulse, and its failure to come to fruition, can be summarized by a number of classic oppositions in Western thought: nature versus technology, local versus global, rural versus urban, and individual versus collective." Lire la suite http://www.artdaily.com/section/news/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=19846

Joel Sternfeld, Ruins of Drop City, Trinidad, Colorado, August 1995, 2005 (Courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine Gallery; © Joel Sternfeld)