Anarene — Mikel Bastida, Editorial RM, 2023

Anarene is Mikel Bastida’s fictional road trip through the ruins of American mythology, shot not from the highway but from the quiet, scorched shoulder of the myth itself. In these haunted, restrained photographs, Bastida returns to the ghost towns and cinematic landscapes that once staged the nation’s dream of itself — but now feel half-shed, uninhabited, out of frame. The title refers to the Texas town in The Last Picture Show, already emptied out in 1971, already a fiction. Bastida’s approach is more forensic than nostalgic: lingering shots of signage, voided parking lots, tired flags, and gestures mid-conversation show America not as a narrative but a residue. The sequencing, book design by Grégoire Pujade-Lauraine, and restrained palette draw clear lines to Alec Soth and Justine Kurland, but Bastida’s tone is starker, more European in its detachment. Co-published with Comunidad de Madrid, Anarene is a photographic novel about the afterimage of the West, the infrastructure of forgetting, and what lingers once the myth loses interest.

Technical Sheet
Title: Anarene
Artist / Author: Mikel Bastida
Date: 2023
Technique / Printing Method: Offset
Medium / Materials: Hardcover
Dimensions (cm): 23 × 28.8
Language: English
Pages: 116
Publisher / Editor: Comunidad de Madrid,  Editorial RM
Designer: Grégoire Pujade-Lauraine
Condition: NEW