Big Skies, Small Communities: Photographer Lucas Foglia recounts stories from the Wild West

Between 2006 and 2013, Lucas Foglia travelled with a van, a mattress and his camera through the American South. At the beginning of his trip, he immersed himself in the lives of people living in remote, alternative communities and this became a collection of photographs entitled A Natural Order. At the end of his travels, he published Frontcountry, a series focusing on small communities living in the midst of a mining and energy boom. In both collections the photographs are intensely personal, offering a close-up look at people who usually keep themselves to themselves. They radiate a sense of secrecy, spirit and adventure, reflecting his odyssey deep into the ageless backcountry of Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas and Wyoming. Lucas’ story begins on a farm in upstate New York, surrounded by monotonous suburbs and a metallic crown of industrialisation rising over the idyllic fields. He grew up in a place that was both urban and rustic, a space containing signs of America’s two most iconic landscapes – the ancient wild and the newly modern. His mother is a folklorist, and would tell her son the stories she had gathered through the years; stories about the vast, sprawling United States and the different people who live there. “My favourite of my mother’s stories were open-ended. The kind of folk tales that just end… and you don’t quite know if you want to be happy or sad. You want to hear them again, just to get towards whichever emotion it is.” Lucas explains his work through metaphor and anecdote, as a combination of geography and memory. “Narrative in a single photograph is open-ended. At best there is a sense of something that happened before, something that is happening at the moment of the picture, and something that is about to happen,” he explains. He strives to capture what he describes as the “extraordinary moments” embedded in the larger, practical story of everyday life in the endless American West. To do this he immerses himself in the tight, insular communities that he documents in order to capture these fleeting moments. “I like spending time in the places I photograph, and then finding things that feel extraordinary, that come out of the everyday experience of being somewhere. When I first started travelling, one of the farmers I visited said that for the first day I was a guest, and then after that I was free labour. That allowed me to see things as they were happening around me, to participate, and then find moments that felt like they were significant.” Lucas’ work is like that of a travelling storyteller, but instead of sharing stories with those he meets and moving on, he becomes a part of their story too. He joins in with their lives, earning their trust in exchange for his images. “In Afton, Wyoming I once helped to take apart a cow for the first time in my life. I tried to take photographs as we were doing it but the image that stayed from the experience was the image of the cow looking at me before it was shot. The eye contact felt most memorable, more than the body once it was killed.” Lucas is constantly looking for this eye contact, and his subjects become guides who open up their world for him and point to where he might go next. “I go to places that are recommended by people I know. I follow stories that are passed along by friends.” Looking through his books, the individual photographs are linked by a web of unseen connections; they’re spun by hearsay, the product of local legends. His photographs contain the esoteric, shadowy essence of folklore and the matter-of-fact details of handed-down traditions, but rather than preserving oral history through words, he records and creates a visual one. His pictures honour and embellish the stories, settings and people he finds. This is particularly clear in a photograph showing a group of boys playing American football against the backdrop of a snow-capped mountain range. “I met some local ranchers,” he says, “and through them I met other families. Their kids went to high school and started sports when the ground was still covered in snow in the spring. “I visited their high school a number of times while staying with families in the area. I’d go watch practice. It was a time when everyone was outside, even in weather that harsh. In small communities, sports are more than a competition. They’re a way for people to get together, a way for community to build. Some of those kids have to get on a bus and travel over an hour to get home but they stay to play sports every day, it’s their time to socialise. By socialising, they are outside with the backdrop of that landscape.” The landscape is part of what makes the photograph so sublime, and is heightened when contrasted with the shocking, synthetic green, red and yellow of the football field. There is a majesty emanating from those distant peaks, one that seems to rub off on the huddle of players gazing purposefully towards the ball, connected but apart from their surroundings. It ca