Lucas Foglia

New Year, new talent:

Having only graduated from Yale last year, Lucas Foglia's work is ridiculously confident and mature for someone who's only twenty seven. Foglia has realised two serious projects, Re-Wilding and Between Mountain And Mines, which look at two different types of rural American life. Re-Wilding follows people who've made a conscious effort to leave the modern world, and quit towns and cities to live a more pastoral existence off the grid in parts of Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. His shots, beautifully composed, show amazing scenes of this modern rural life, from women learning to shoot rifles, to kids milking cows, to dead animals lying slain in the woods. Riveting, moving and sometimes sinister, Re-Wilding is a great achievement. The photographs feel part-documentary, part Crewdson-esque complicated set up, and the viewer is not entirely sure if what they are seeing is true. Foglia says this of his working process: "I take candid photographs, but often ask my subjects to hold still or alter their actions for the sake of a better visual image. I also work collaboratively with my subjects to recreate events that I have observed, occasionally re-photographing and compositing different images. My process of making images varies; what matters to me is the form and content of the final image"

Between Mountains And Mines explores communities based in Wyoming in one of the largest areas of undeveloped land in the Unites States. Foglia once more captures some images of real beauty in a harsh environment, showing an understanding eye for his subjects who have chosen to live somewhere where wilderness and the indutrial world meet.

There's many parallels in both series, showing intrepid types who have chosen a more difficult but perhaps more rewarding way of living today. Foglia has found fertile subject matter in these modern day pioneers, and it will be interesting to see where he turns his camera next.

From the Re-Wilding series

From the Re-Wilding series

From the Re-Wilding series

From the Re-Wilding series

From the Re-Wilding series

From the Re-Wilding series

From the Between Mines And Mountains series

From the Between Mines And Mountains series

From the Re-Wilding series

From the Between Mines And Mountains series

From the Between Mines And Mountains series

From the Between Mines And Mountains series

From the Re-Wilding series

From the Re-Wilding series

All images © Lucas Foglia