Way Off the Grid: A photographer documents the primitive lives of “rewilders”
(Page 2 of 2)
March-April 2009
by Joseph Hart
“This idea of a return to wilderness is in the American psychology,” says Foglia, who is in the fine arts program at the Yale School of Art. “I don’t want to make the lifestyle seem easy. It is definitely hard work. But I do want to make it seem accessible. At exhibits, people respond with a real desire or nostalgia for wilderness.”
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Foglia collaborates closely with the families he photographs, living with them for days or weeks at a time and helping them with their daily chores. His images, more portraiture than photojournalism, are often planned and his subjects posed. On his return visits, he brings prints from his last trip and shares them with the people he has photographed. “Instead of simply illustrating a subject,” he says, “I want the photographs to reveal something deeper—the complexity of their relationship to nature and self-sustenance and the psychology behind the desire for independence from the mainstream.”
The best of his photos explore this human relationship with wilderness, and the special libertarian independence zone of the American psyche. Some may see the people in his photos as freaks. A more appropriate view, in light of current political and ecological events, might be to see them as guides.
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