Lucas Foglia
Human Nature
“Today, nature both heals us and threatens us. As we spend more time than ever indoors looking at screens, neuroscientists demonstrate that time outside is vital to human health and happiness. Yet, we are vulnerable to the storms, droughts, heat waves, and freezes that result from climate change. Conservationists often disagree about how humankind should best move forward from the damage we have already done. Traditionalists argue that we should put a boundary around wild spaces to preserve them, but there is no way to contain the effects of people. More radical conservationists propose moving all people to green cities, supplied with renewable energy and sustainable agriculture, to allow the countryside to rewild itself.
Responding to this debate, I befriended and photographed people who are working towards a positive environmental future despite the enormity of the task. Human Nature is a series of photographic stories about how we care for nature in the context of climate change. Each story is set in a different ecosystem: city, forest, farm, desert, ice field, ocean, and lava flow. The photographs examine our need for “wild” places—even when those places are human constructions.”
Images © Lucas Foglia
