In the beginning, all the world was America – John Locke

As John Locke stated referring to the new continent as a natural and primitive condition of man, “In the beginning all the world was America”. The idea of freedom and possibility that the naturalistic amenities of America should have suggested to the first settlers,  became progressively more and more rooted in the perception of the country itself. Liberty not only in its geographic connotation , but also in its social, cultural, spiritual, and political implications. Thus, from the very beginning the enthusiasm of the recent discovery, gave birth to an idea of “pastoralism”, freedom, and optimistic “natural goodness of man and nature” that soon became unavoidably tied to the idea of America.

Photo taken in Sept. 2012 © Elena Brunello