Michael Amato is a fine art photographer, emerging artist, and recent graduate of the University of Connecticut.
Much of his work carries a central theme of paranoia; regarding his concern with the advancement of technology and its impact on the human mind and society, issues of privacy loss in an age of virtual transparency, and the impact of fear culture in the western world. Other bodies of work focus on cultures and ways of living that fascinate him.
It was 1947, and America had just come out from World War II. Harry Truman was the man in charge of guiding the country out of darkness towards a new era of hope and change. He decided to open his speech with what has become one of the most quoted sentences about fear: “America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and on unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.”
Flash forward. Hope has gone and political fights, terrorists’ attacks and violence have been spreading all over the continent. It’s 2017. And we can say – without hesitations – that today America is built on fear.
These are the assumptions on which Michael Amato’s ingenious project is based.
Our photographer speaks about fear as a physical process, providing us with all the “scientific” details of this fore emotion that is totally uncontrollable. It speaks of contemporary fear that instead of being an unconscious and uncontrollable emotion is like getting injected daily into the body of the human being. Culture, totalitarianism, and television are these modern factors that lead man to live in silent terror.
The Michael project aims to give hope to young people today, he wants to prove through the images to change the common thought that by now has been established not only in thought but also in world culture. He says in a very positive way:
“It is my belief that a culture of fear will spread across the globe; it may already be happening” continues Michael. “In western countries across the world Authoritarian populism is growing in popularity. The people who are voting for these Authoritarian leaders are very likely influenced by a culture of fear, but I cannot say for sure as I have not lived outside of the United States. I hope that we young people will become more aware of the ways that our values are shaped by the media we consume; and that together we can overcome this intensifying shift towards fear, hate, and isolationism.”
