THE FALL
I am sitting in the passenger seat of a pick-up truck. Between me and the man driving leans the long barrel of a shotgun. Around us the grass has turned yellow in the dry heat. Scattered in the fields, the bunkers emerge from the ground, their spacious bellies underground. I am alive and you are dead, I think as I drive past the world’s largest survival community.
The place is infested by rattlesnakes. A gated community, but some bunker owners chose to have a barbed wire fence around their property too. Despite the snakes and the isolation, people claim to feel safe here, safer than they felt in their houses in Minnesota, California or Arizona.
Journal entry. 4th September 2022. Edgemont, South Dakota.
There are several deep-rooted beliefs surrounding the apocalypse and the end of days. I am interested in understanding how belonging to a community or a cult can make people feel protected from what they fear may happen. I travelled from the Greek island of Patmos, where the Book of Revelation was written, to La Palma in the Canary Islands and went on a road trip to the United States. Driving around the country I went in search of survivalists, preppers, religious cults and bunker dwellers to understand how society is preparing to face potentially catastrophic events but also what scares us the most – the unknown.
Giulia Mangione
Giulia Mangione (Florence, 1987) is a visual artist who lives and works in Oslo. In her practice, she incorporates photography, video, and writing to explore the concepts of identity and belonging. After earning an MA in Literature from Goldsmiths, University of London, she completed an MFA in Fine Arts at the Bergen Art Academy and a diploma in Advanced Visual Storytelling at the Danish School of Media and Journalism in Århus. Her book Halfway Mountain (Journal, 2018) was shortlisted for the Prix du Livre at Les Rencontres d’Arles and nominated for the MACK First Book Award. Her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries including Triennale Milano, the International Center of Photography in New York, Preus Museum (The Norwegian Museum of Photography), Foto-Forum in Bolzano, Fotogalleriet in Oslo, and Bergen Kunsthall.