LUCAS FOGLIA: The Houston Center for Photography

Lucas Foglia Cora in Camouflage Dress, Tennessee 2008 Digital C-Print from the series Rewilding
An unsettling tension surfaces between the young woman on the sidewalk in a conservative dress and the manniquin in the window surrounded by more contemporary dresses. It is a clash not only of fashion but of culture, tradition, and perhaps time. The woman appears uncertain and nervous as though she is questioning her identity.


Lucas Foglia Scarecrow 2008 Digital C-print
from the series Rewilding

I grew up with my extended family on a farm in suburban Long Island. Influenced by the back-to-the-land movement of the 1960's, 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. Through a family friend, I was introduced to a network of people in Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and Georgia who have responded to environmental concerns and predictions of societal collapse by moving to the wilderness. 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. I am intrigued by their desire for self-sufficiency and by the complexity of their relationship with the natural world. Rewilding: the process of creating a lifestyle that is
independent of the domestication of civilization.

The depth of field in this image is visually intriguing as the eye follows the rows of corn but is interrupted by a light pink dress flowing in the wind. The dress resembles a human female body and as a viewer I cannot help but feel the presence of a woman walking through this field. In other words, the object triggers or signifies something else than that which is actually present in the photograph.