Curran Hatleberg’s photos, shots of an American dream

“Rivers’ Dream” is the book that collects the artist’s works: the result of an entire decade of wanderings in the southern United States, between Florida, Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. An America increasingly divided, but the photographs illuminate an unexpected hope

Snakes, alligators, dogs, bees. And then woods, demolished cars, ponds, dominoes, watermelons. Curran Hatleberg’s is a rosary of objects, perspectives and situations in which the animal and plant worlds mix often without solution of continuity, as if to earn them a shot – and therefore the attention of the photographer – were only chance. River’s Dream (TBW Books, 2022), the volume signed by the just forty-year-old American artist and finished among the finalists of the Paris Photo-Aperture PhotoBook Awards, the most important prize in photography publications, is the result of an entire decade of wanderings in the southern United States, between Florida, Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.