Dead End by Nicola Moscelli

Published March 3, 2025

Dead End by Nicola Moscelli (curated by Steve Bisson, with graphic design by Roberto Vito D'Amico, and published by Penisola Edizioni in collaboration with Antiga Edizioni) is a visual documentary book exploring the US-Mexico border.

Conceived as a dossier, the book catalogues black-and-white panoramic format hyper-surveillance imagery from Google Street View alongside vintage postcards and old prints, confronting border issues across space and time through the recurring motif of the dead end—both physical and metaphorical. The visual content is enriched with quotes from ordinary people and historical figures, along with excerpts from government documents, interviews, social media, poetry fragments, and song lyrics.

The author’s textual essays provide additional depth to the research. Dead End further includes a foreword titled “How to Transcend the Distance” by Maceo Montoya (artist, writer, professor of Chicana/o Studies at UC Davis, and editor of Huizache magazine), an interview with Miriam Ticktin (professor of Anthropology at CUNY Graduate Center), and an afterword, “Who Draws the Boundaries?”, by Steve Bisson.

The book spans 360 pages in 200 mm × 297 mm format. It is produced with offset printing and features a soft cover with flaps (Fedrigoni Materica Clay 250g/m² paper). The binding is a Swiss brochure style with an exposed spine, adding a distinctive tactile and visual element to the publication.

The typeface Exposure—designed by Federico Parra-Barrios and distributed by 205TF—has been used for the textual essays. The open-source font IBM Plex Mono is employed for labelling the dossier content.

The book is composed of four distinct sections. A Mexican border section and a US border section, both printed on Fedrigoni Arena Rough White 90g/m², are enclosed by the cover flaps. Positioned between them are the colophon, printed on Favini Burano Giallo Zolfo, and a section on the evolution of the border, printed on Fedrigoni Symbol Freelife Satin Premium White 130. Additionally, a cartographic map is included to help navigate the book’s content.

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