In Community, Sky Blue (2001–2004)

Beginning in 2001, I began seeking present-day communes and making group portraits of their members as an investigation into alternative modes of living in community. Groups like The Farm, Black Bear Ranch, Twin Oaks, and many others were established during an era of American history in the late 60s and early 70s marked by radical, sustained countercultural movements. My mother lives in an area considered by the clairvoyant and holistic healer Edgar Casey to be psychically safe land. Following this designation, many of his disciples formed intentional communities nearby. The groups I visited achieved varied success in their degree of sustainability, equitable distribution of income, and overall social structure. Each group, however, was singularly dedicated to finding ways to live in harmonious coexistence with the land through consensus, mutual aid, and shared values.

The concurrent color photographs are staged reenactments made to live out my fantasies of communal living drawn from the archival materials I collected on early agrarian back-to-the-land movements in the United States. I asked participants, sometimes members of the communes I visited, as well as fellow travelers, my friends, and my mother to pose in the nude as though the articles of clothing they cast off were the last vestiges of their disavowed relation to civilization. They weed their gardens and go about their business naked and hairy in the bright light of day.