Raised on a small family farm in Long Island, photographer Lucas Foglia has always had a fascination for life surrounded by nature. After graduating from Brown University and the Yale School of Art, Froglia started living and working in New York and San Francisco, two of the most mundane and revolutionary cities of both the East and West coast. Interesting though, to see how the 27-year-old photographer focuses on those living in the countryside, solely surrounded by nature, family and animals. Over the past four years, Foglia traveled through the southeastern states of the US, photographing communities and families that purposely live a modest, old-fashioned life.

The communities of subject are doing this for various reasons; some of them are environmentalists while others are motivated by religious beliefs. On his website, Foglia states: ‘All the people in my photographs are working to maintain a self-sufficient lifestyle, but no one I found lives in complete isolation from the mainstream. Many of my subjects have websites that they update using laptop computers, and cell phones that they charge on car batteries or solar panels.’ This extreme contradiction is clearly visible in Foglia’s beautiful images, which makes them worth the watch.