Lucas Foglia’s work looks at our changing relationship to the ‘land’ as we enter the second decade of this new millennium. He tells stories through communities of people whose lifestyles reflect their commitment to a different way of life often outside of and at odds with the mainstream. His pictures and stories are generous in their embrace and feel as much like collaborations as they do direct documents. Yet they belie a taught rigor, a strong sense of insight and a broad reach beyond the particular subjects, speaking rather to a more universal and essential concern—our place in a changing world, our stewardship of the earth and the many roles we can play in the politics of change. Phillip S. Block A NATURAL ORDER From 2006 through 2010, I travelled throughout the southeastern United States befriending, photographing, and interviewing a network of people who left cities and suburbs to live off the grid. Motivated by environ- mental concerns, religious beliefs, or predictions of economic collapse, they build their homes from local materials, obtain their water from nearby springs, and hunt, gather, or grow their own food. All the people in my photographs are working to maintain a self-sufficient lifestyle, but no one I found lives in complete isolation from the mainstream. Many have websites that they update using laptop comput- ers, and cell phones that they charge on car batteries or solar panels. They do not wholly reject the modern world. Instead, they step away from it and choose the parts that they want to bring with them.

Lucas Foglia