LUCAS FOGLIA: HUMAN NATURE

13 September - 21 October 2017

Works

Overview

“I grew up on a small farm, thirty miles east of New York City. Growing our food and bartering, my family felt shielded from the strip malls and suburbs around us. The forest that bordered the farm was my childhood wilderness, a wild place to play that was ignored by our neighbors who commuted to Manhattan. In 2012, Hurricane Sandy flooded our fields and blew down the oldest trees in the woods. On the news, scientists linked the storm to climate change caused by human activity. I realized that if humans are changing the weather, then there is no place on Earth unaltered by people.”

- Lucas Foglia

Human Nature leads us through Foglia’s journey in sequences of photographs. It begins and ends with interpretations of paradise, moving through cities, forests, farms, deserts, ice fields, and oceans in between. Scientists are pictured as they work to quantify and understand our relationship with the natural world, measuring how we change nature and how spending time in wild spaces changes us.

Both factual and lyrical, the series is a celebration of the curious. At times funny, at others, sad or sensual, the images illuminate the human need to connect with nature and to the wildness in ourselves.

Foglia’s work is driven by a desire to understand the conflicting forces of modernity and nature; how we manipulate the earth to sap its resources, and how some seek to restore it. Human Nature revisits themes established in previous projects A Natural Order and Frontcountry, but on a broader, global scale.

A monograph published by Nazraeli Press will accompany the exhibition. Solo exhibitions are forthcoming at Foam in Amsterdam and at Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago.

Lucas Foglia’s photographs are held in major collections in Europe and in the United States, including; Art Collection Deutsche Börse, David Winton Bell Gallery of Brown University, Denver Art Museum, Foam, International Center of Photography, Kunstmuseum Magdeburg, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Victoria and Albert Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pier 24, Portland Art Museum and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.