Pieter Ten Hoopen: Hungry Horse, Montana

Kulturni center Janeza Trdine, Novi trg 5
Open: 26.7.: 19h – 21h, 27.7. – 31.7.: 10h – 20h, 2.8. – 7.8.: 10h – 16h
Sunday closed.

At the far end of Montana, in middle America, lies the little town of Hungry Horse. This place embodies the desolation of today’s USA.

Hungry Horse has 900 inhabitants. Most of them work in other towns of the valley or are unemployed. The city is just a forced way for the Glacier National Park visitors.

70% percent of inhabitants live in trailers, and drugs consumption is a way of forgetting about loneliness and boredom for an hour or two. Lost in the Rocky Mountains, people escape with the help of crystal meth.

In an attempt to counter the issue of drug abuse, Hungry Horse church set a program in which former drug addicts go to the streets at night to help young men and women who use drugs.

Lack of social prospects press many young men to leave school and join the army. They end up fighting in Afghanistan or Iraq.

The consequences of the current economical crisis has been the daily lot for Hungry Horse inhabitants for numerous years.

The great need for affection and compassion has become the main theme of this photographic work.
Along portraits and landscapes pictures, we ought to figure out the core of the problem that has been haunting Hungry Horse, a ghost town in a country looking for its own identity.