Lucas Foglia was raised on a small family farm in Huntington, Long Island. A graduate of Brown University and a current MFA candidate at Yale School of Art, Foglia exhibits nationally. His photographs are included in permanent collections including the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Fine Art, Newport Art Museum, Margulies Collection, Light Work, Woodstock Center for Photography, David Winton Bell Gallery of Brown University, Starr Foundation, and Sprint Systems of Photography. Foglia has been an Artist-in-Residence at Light Work, and recent awards include the “Top 50 Photographers” chosen by Photolucida’s Critical Mass, “Photography Now” from the Center for Photography at Woodstock and Magenta Foundation’s “Flash Forward 2008.”
Interview
Can you tell us what made you decide to embark on the Re-Wilding photo project? ‘I grew up with my extended family on a farm in suburban Long Island. Influenced by the back-to-the-land movement of the 1960s, my parents maintained an agricultural lifestyle as malls and supermarkets developed around us. We heated with wood, grew and canned our food and bartered plants for everything from shoes to dentistry’.
‘Most of my subjects live off-the-grid, build their homes from local materials, obtain their water from nearby streams and hunt, gather or grow their own food. Many start fires with friction, tan animal hides for clothing and collect herbs for medicine. I am drawn to my subjects’ desire for self-sufficiency and intrigued by the complexity of their relationship with the natural world. Rewilding is defined as the process of creating a lifestyle that is independent of the domestication of civilization’.
Your photos portray a kind of utopia. Did you find this easily at the communities you visited or is it something you had to look for or recreate? ‘I think of my photographs as fictions that are accurate to the spaces in which I am photographing. Utopia implies a place in which social, legal, and political justice exist in perfect harmony. While I admire my subjects’ skills and intentions, I do not want to depict a utopia. Instead, this series is about the complexity of people’s relationship to nature and survival in one of the few developed countries in which there is still a wilderness we can return to’.
What made you decide to donate proceeds of your print sales to the subjects in particular photographs? ‘I donate a portion of the proceeds from my print sales to either the subject of the photograph or a related charity. I also give my subjects a copy of each print. I think of my photographs as collaborations between my subjects and myself and as such I want the sale of my prints to benefit my subjects, myself and the idea that I am exploring within the series’.
What camera are you using for this series?
‘A Hasselblad with a Leaf Aptus75 Digital Back’
Describe your process when taking these photographs.
‘I have a minivan with a bed in the back and storage space for food, clothes and camera gear. I have converters on the cigarette lighters so I can charge my equipment on the road, and with a laptop my van
becomes a mobile studio. My subjects live across Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky. I travel between their homes and communities and stay in each place for days or weeks at a time. I develop close relationships with my subjects, help out whenever I can, and always have my camera ready. While many of my photographs are candid, I often ask my subjects to hold still and work with them to compose and enact the content of the image’.
