One Way USA: America 1969

English/French. 80 photographies inédites de l’Amérique de 1969. America! Huge country and adolescence stunned by the wind of freedom. Meeting with a welcoming youth with open arms, without embarrassment or detention. Nixon was the President of the United States and the Vietnam War ubiquitous in the news. In California, the University of Berkeley was still bubbling in good humor when the hour was serious: Young people died in war or returned crippled for life. On June 24, 1969, Michel Berberian landed in the freshly built from TWA to Kennedy Airport. He’s just twenty years old. To join the downtown Manhattan, he takes the public shuttle that goes around neighborhoods on the outskirts. There, he discovers a panorama to which he cannot expected: The poor neighborhoods, the gray streets and the holes in the pavements. This America did not look like the one we described usually. Going to meet skyscrapers, neon lights and glitter, Michel Berberian finally photographed the Americans.